NUCLEAR WASTE DUMPING PLAN STALLS IN KAZAKHSTAN
John Bennett: 1/28/03

Kazakhstani Prime Minister Imangali Tasmagambetov suggested on January 22 that the government should pay for the proper disposal of Kazakhstan’s domestic nuclear waste. His suggestion may put to rest months of controversy over a proposal to permit the commercial importation of nuclear waste into the country. Kazatomprom, the government enterprise responsible for managing trade in uranium and nuclear fuel, has strongly promoted the import plan, arguing that additional revenues were needed to clean up the country’s existing nuclear waste stockpile.

The Prime Minister’s comments, quoted in the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, are the latest in a string of setbacks for Kazatomprom’s proposal. In November 2002, Tasmagambetov stated only that the issue was complex and required further study. In late December, a group of parliamentary deputies visited a potential burial site in western Kazakhstan. Opponents of the plan held public hearings prior to the deputies’ arrival, igniting strong local concern. A few weeks later, on January 8, the MPs announced that no legislation was pending to overturn the country’s five-year-old ban on nuclear waste imports. And a week later, Minister of Environment Aitkul Samakova told reporters that she opposed the import plan.

Given the stiff opposition, Kazatomprom appears to have backed off the waste import plan. But according to Vadim Nee, a prominent Kazakh attorney who opposes the import idea, Kazatomprom’s idea could be revived later, perhaps after the next round of elections in 2004. "It is possible that they will start to prepare this project more carefully," said Nee. "They believe it will be a source of revenue."

Indeed, Mukhtar Dzhakishev, Kazatomprom’s President, earlier denounced parliamentary opposition, accusing the deputies of playing politics and not supporting an important project. Dzhakishev has not abandoned the position that the plan would provide a windfall for the government. In an interview in Kazatomprom’s offices in mid-November 2002, he told EurasiaNet that creating a nuclear waste repository for Europe and other countries would yield as much as $4,000 in profit per barrel for the country. These proceeds, which he predicted might total $20 billion or more, would enable the country to clean up its enormous stockpile of domestic nuclear waste and radioactive material.

Environmental organizations in Kazakhstan have long pushed for better management of the country’s many Soviet-era uranium mines and former nuclear missile test sites. Nee, a key ally of many environmentalist groups, says that government authorities are not equipped to regulate the country’s unstable uranium industry and outsized nuclear waste legacy. Giving authorities domain over more waste, he believes, will simply make a very bad problem worse.

By any measure, the country’s 21-person nuclear regulatory body, the Committee on Atomic Energy, faces daunting challenges. With a quarter of the world’s uranium supply, Kazakhstan has amassed more than 230 million tons of radioactive waste at over 500 locations. In recent years, the government has also shut down a plutonium-producing fast breeder reactor. Kazakhstan’s unresolved nuclear legacy has caught the attention of security-conscious international partners, including the United States. Washington has supported Kazakhstan’s radioactive waste program with millions of dollars in technical and financial assistance. Still, Kazatomprom estimates that an additional $1.1 billion is needed to clean up the country’s nuclear stockpile.

Kazatomprom may have overplayed its hand, though. According to Timur M. Zhantikin, chairman of the Committee on Atomic Energy, the agency would have parliament overturn a five-year-old ban on importing toxic waste even though no sites have yet been licensed to receive imported waste or designated for construction of a repository. Dzhakishev, however, has said that a waste repository could be created in shallow clay trenches in an area near Aktau, which borders the Caspian Sea. Claiming that the storage scheme would be environmentally safe, he also said that imports would not need to await completion of a secure waste repository. Waste barrels could, he said, be stacked in concrete-reinforced pits.

Such an approach, were it used, would likely put Kazakhstan at odds with internationally accepted norms for intermediate-level nuclear waste disposal, which ordinarily contains highly dangerous isotopes such as plutonium. Nevertheless, Dzhakishev claimed in November that the plan has backing from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). At the time, the IAEA confirmed to the British newspaper, the Guardian, that its officials had spoken with Kazakhstan’s government about the importation idea, but only to explain international standards. The agency denied that it had encouraged Kazakhstan "to pursue importing radioactive waste."

Even before the most recent rebuffs, Dzhakishev had acknowledged that public support for the import proposal was weak. While he insisted that "the profits would be enormous," environmentalists made the case that the risks of importing waste would be larger. Sergei Kuratov of the Green Salvation environmental group described the nuclear waste scheme as unacceptable on several levels. He doubts that an international export market would materialize. But even if it did, he told EurasiaNet, "all Kazakh citizens are entitled by law to a clean environment. How could we guarantee that customs, transport and security issues would be adequately addressed?" Oil-rich Kazakhstan’s government does not lack funds to clean up the country’s nuclear waste legacy, Kuratov contends. What it has lacked, he adds, is a desire to make safeguarding the environment a priority.

Editor’s Note: John Bennett is an independent consultant and freelance journalist specializing in environmental affairs.

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Posted January 28, 2003 © Eurasianet
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