Nuclear power: Russian activists protest against uranium shipments from Germany

Environmental activists have demonstrated in several Russian cities against the transport of production waste from the German uranium enrichment plant Gronau to Russia. "Under the guise of" valuable raw materials ", Russia actually imports waste from uranium enrichment," said Rashid Alimov of the Greenpeace organization in St. Petersburg.

There, according to Russian media reports, the cargo ship "Mikhail Dudin" had arrived with about 600 tons of uranium hexafluoride from Gronau in North Rhine-Westphalia, had lain two days off St. Petersburg and had been unloaded on Thursday. The toxic substance accumulates during the enrichment of uranium for nuclear power plants. According to Greenpeace, the delivery is to be brought from the Baltic metropolis to Novouralsk near the city of Yekaterinburg on the Urals.

"This substance is dangerous," said the Greenpeace representative Alimov the news agency AFP. Future generations would have to pay for this mistake. Also in Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Kazan and four other cities protesters went against the delivery on the street.

Previously also protests in NRW

The state Russian nuclear energy group Rosatom confirmed the delivery on request of the German Press Agency initially not. According to radio station "Echo Moskwy", however, the company emphasized that the substance was used for enrichment. The storage in the cargo ship had been safe for the residents of St. Petersburg and the environment. In addition, the transport should meet both Russian and international requirements.

The delivery of the waste had been previously known. In NRW activists had demonstrated against the transports and temporarily blocked them. A disposal in Germany will not be bypassed, it was recently said by NRW Energy Minister Andreas Pinkwart (FDP). "According to the Atomic Energy Act, the material supplied is another radioactive substance and not a nuclear fuel." Despite massive criticism, 27,300 tons of uranium from Gronau were brought to Russia between 1996 and 2009, the Greens had criticized. Only a small part can be enriched again.

Enriched uranium is needed for power generation in nuclear power plants. According to the NRW Ministry of Energy, 576 containers with a total of around 4800 tonnes of uranium hexafluoride were transported by rail, ship and lorry from Gronau via Amsterdam to Russia by October of this year, according to the NRW Ministry of Energy.