Hot Cargo

The world's nuclear plants are rapidly running out of places to store their nuclear waste. Public opposition has blocked plans to build centralized nuclear waste dumps in Sweden, Switzerland, and Australia. The scheme to bury the spent fuel from U.S. nuclear plants deep inside Yucca Mountain in Nevada has run into one political and environmental pitfall after another. Security risks and liability concerns have made keeping the spent fuel on site an economic nightmare for utilities. But where there's danger, there's financial opportunity.

Economically starved Russia is hungry for the chance to cash in on the radioactive loot. Yevgeny Adamov, the head of MinAtom, Russia's ministry of atomic energy, wants to see the Russian Duma overturn its current ban on the import of commercial nuclear waste for storage. Russian plants would be used to reprocess the waste and then export it as nuclear fuel and, perhaps, fissile material. The crafty Adamov estimates that the entire operation could produce $150 billion in revenue, making MinAtom the most powerful operation in Russia.

At this opportune time, along comes a proposal by the altruistic-sounding Non-Proliferation Trust (NPT) that would supply Russia with exactly what Adamov and his cronies crave: tons of nuclear waste and billions of dollars for Russia's comatose economy.

The dissolution of the Russian economy has been hell on the Russian people, but it has proved a boon for some international entrepreneurs and corrupt Russian officials. It has also made the Russian government amenable to proposals that would have seemed outlandish only a few years ago. The NPT/MinAtom agreement is the latest example of how far Russia has fallen. But this deal also sets dangerous precedents by opening up an international market in radioactive waste and by placing nuclear bomb-making materials into the hands of private groups with little or no government oversight. Moreover, this deal may end up saving the nuclear power industry, which is now teetering because of financial and PR burdens stemming from the accumulation of spent fuel, which is stacking up at the rate of 500 pounds of lethal plutonium per reactor per year.

According to the NPT/MinAtom proposal, the NPT will arrange for at least 10,000 metric tons of radioactive waste to be shipped to sites in Russia. The spent fuel will come from commercial reactors in Switzerland, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. The waste would be stored in dry casks for 40 years. NPT, a private entity, would retain title to the nuclear waste, leading to what critics of the plan have called the "monetarization" of nuclear waste.

The Trust plans to charge nuclear utilities between $1,000 and $2,00 per kilogram to dispose of the waste, generating as much as $12 billion in revenue and $10 billion in profits for MinAtom and the contractors. How much NPT personnel will make is unclear. The documents suggest that the Trust will retain at least as much as 10% ($1.2 billion) of the revenue for administrative overhead.

One of the stranger aspects of the deal has the Trust taking control of 50 tons of fissile plutonium from the Russian government and storing at the Mayak facility in the southern Urals. The Trust argues that this will secure the bomb-grade material. Environmentalists and some arms control organizers see it differently. "What you have is a private non-profit group taking title to bomb-making materials," says Michael Mariotte, director of the Nuclear Information and Research Service. "This sets a dangerous precedent and undermines years of non-proliferation agreements."

Questions arise as to how a U.S.-based non-profit will guard the plutonium at a site in the heart of Russia. Will they have a security force? Will they be permitted to fire on Russian troops should they decide to seize the material?

According to sources at the Department of Energy, NPT officials have also talked about the possibility that nuclear waste from U.S. plants could end up being ferried to Russia, especially if the Yucca Mountain plan falls apart. MinAtom actively courted this very scenario in a December 23, 1998 letter from Adamov to U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson: "...it would be advisable to examine the question of possible transfer, on a commercial basis, of spent fuels from U.S. power plants to Russia for its long-term storage and subsequent reprocessing at RF MinAtom enterprises."

So far, the U.S. has rebuffed Adamov's offer. But a recent court victory by the nuclear power industry has complicated the situation enormously. A federal court ruled earlier this year that the U.S. government had made a contractual agreement with the nuclear utilities to assume all of the liabilities and most of the costs for the disposal of the nation's commercial nuclear waste.

The Department of Energy has a huge financial stake in Yucca Mountain, but sources at the Energy Dept. say that the State Department is fervently pushing the plan for a Russian dump. Strobe Talbott has reportedly argued that the NPT proposal may be a way to buttress the ailing Russian economy and keep the defense and nuclear forces from disintegrating.

The biggest initial hurdle for NPT is that the Russian environmental statutes currently outlaw the import of spent fuel for storage in Russia. By recognizing the central fact that (as in the U.S. Congress) money is the real grease to the legislative gears of the Russian parliament, the Trust has pledged to spend at least $3.5 billion on pet projects of key leaders of the Duma. NPT will provide more than $1.8 billion to help build a spent fuel geological repository, an unproven scheme to bury the waste in deep underground caves. Critics note that this is barely a down payment on the pricetag of such a facility. The cost of Yucca Mountain may top $100 billion, if it is ever built and put into operation.

The Trust will also give $600 million for charitable programs administered by MinAtom. More than $200 million will be given to MinAtom to pay the pensions and salaries owed to Russian nuclear and defense workers. Russian environmental programs will get $200 million. Another $200 million will be doled out to Russian pensioners. And, most peculiarly, at least $100 million would be handed out to Russian orphans.

One of the big questions is what happens to the waste after it arrives in Russia. According to NPT, the fuel would be either stored in casks or buried in deep geological formations. Under either scenario, the contract is for only 40 years, the equivalent of a nanosecond for waste that remains radioactive for nearly a million years. NPT claims that the fuel would not be reprocessed, but the Russian government has other ideas. Officials at MinAtom want to use the new stream of money to rebuild Russia's crumbling nuclear facilities and reprocess the waste into weapons grade uranium. Under the terms of a 1993 agreement forged between Al Gore and Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Russians believe they could then turn around and sell the uranium to the United States. Or the hot materials could be sold to Pakistan, India, Israel, Iran, China, or North Korea. MinAtom is long known as a lucrative feeding ground for corrupt officials and the resurgent Russian mob.

The NPT proposal might sound far-fetched, but the organization is taken seriously in Washington. NPT is overseen by some of America's top nuclear warriors. Its board includes Admiral Daniel J. Murphy, Admiral Bruce DeMars, William Webster, and Dr. William Von Raab. Murphy, who is the founder of the NPT parent organization, was the former commander of the Sixth Fleet, deputy director of the CIA, chief of staff for George Bush when Bush was vice president, and former Vice-Chairman of Hill and Knowlton, the global PR firm.

DeMars was the former director of the Navy's nuclear propulsion program, chief of its nuclear sub fleet, head of its reactor program during the Clinton era and, after his retirement, a high-paid consultant to defense firms. William Webster is the former director of both the CIA and the FBI and an advisor on nuclear issues to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the D.C. think-tank that is home to many former intelligence operatives. Von Raab served as U.S. Customs Commissioner during the Reagan era (when tons of cocaine was being moved under the noses of customs agents by the Contras) and was a top official of the old Federal Energy Administration. Over the years the firm has employed a retinue of lobbyists wired into Congress and the White House.

NPT anticipated opposition from environmentalists in Russia and the United States. To deflect such criticism, they recruited one of the world's most prominent green groups as an ally: the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Cochran, head of NRDC's nuclear program, has portrayed his and NRDC's roles as limited. "I only provide public policy advice to NPT," Cochran told the industry newsletter NuclearFuels. But NRDC stands to play a much bigger role than that. Cochran is listed as a trustee of the MinAtom Development Trust--hardly a small-time operation. More than $3 billion will flow through its accounts. In addition, NRDC is slated to be the program manager for the $200 million "Russian Environmental Reclamation Fund" and will receive "reasonable overhead, program management expenses, and administrative expenses." This cut could total about 10% of the entire fund or $20 million. In 1998, NRDC's annual income was only $27 million.

The marginal non-proliferation gains seem far outweighed by the environmental and security risks posed by creating an international market for materials that remain lethal for millenia and that can be converted fairly easily into the ingredients that power bombs capable of destroying large cities. The responsibility for the safe disposal of commercial nuclear waste should reside with the nuclear utilities, not economically desperate nations who are driven to take the spent fuel over the objections of their own people.

Nature & Politics appears weekly in the Anderson Valley Advertiser ( 12451 Anderson Valley Way, Boonville, CA 95415, $40/year). Cockburn and St. Clair also edit the biweekly newsletter CounterPunch, which "tells the facts and names the names" (3220 N. Street NW, PMB 346, Washington, DC 2007-2829, $40/year).