Norway considers shipping its nuclear waste to Russia

Norway has some 16 tons of spent nuclear fuel, 10 tons stored at its Halden reactor and six tons at the Kjeller reactor, both located in southern Norway.

The two Norwegian research reactors are operated by the Institute for Energy Technology.

If sent to Russia, the spent fuel will end up at the Mayak reprocessing plant north of Chelyabinsk in the South Urals.

The Norwegian environmental group Bellona is strongly opposing the idea. – It would be totally irresponsible to send the Norwegian nuclear waste to Mayak in Russia, says Nils Bøhmer, Bellona’s nuclear physicist. He has been working with Russia’s nuclear problems over the last 20 years.

The Trade and Industry Ministry’s Technical Committee has, according to a press-release posted at the Ministry’s web-portal, decided that further temporary storage in Norway is not desirable, and recommends that the waste is to be sent abroad for reprocessing such that it can be stored in a more stable fashion than it is currently.

The entire report is posted at the Ministry’s web-portal (pdf 10 MB).

In addition to Russia’s Mayak plant, the Committee says the French La Hague reprocessing plant might be suitable for receiving the Norwegian spent nuclear fuel.

The Mayak reprocessing plant has over the years received spent nuclear fuel from Russia’s water cooled nuclear power plant reactors of the VVER-440 type, including the Kola nuclear power plant. Also, several Eastern European countries with Soviet designed reactors have sent their spent nuclear fuel to Mayak. Finland stopped sending their spent nuclear fuel to Mayak in 1994.

Last September, the vessel MCL Trader sailed all along the coast of Norway to Murmansk with spent nuclear fuel from a Polish research reactor. In Murmansk the spent fuel were loaded over to railway wagons and transported to Mayak, as reported by BarentsObserver.

The Ministry told the Committee to exclude consideration of the British Sellafield plant for political reasons. Norway has over the last decades protested strongly against the pollution of radioactivity from Sellafield since the radioactive isotopes from the plant can be traced all along the coast of Norway to the Barents Sea in the north.

- So long as Sellafield is to be considered inappropriate, so should Mayak, says Nils Bøhmer in Bellona and continues: -We know there are large leaks associated with reprocessing at Mayak and that they are already dealing with huge challenges of waste.

Norway has with its Foreign Ministry’s Action Plan on Nuclear Safety granted just over NOK 1.4 billion for nuclear safety work in Northwest Russia.

Read also: Reactors stored safely onshore