Not ready to import nuclear fuel for reprocessing

Controversial plans to ship 1,800 mt of British radioactive material to Kyrgyzstan for reprocessing have not been agreed by the authorities in Bishkek, a government official told IRIN on Thursday. "Nobody, neither a legal entity nor a real person, has applied to us for a licence to import this uranium waste," Emil Akmatov, a spokesman for the Kyrgyz Ministry of Environment and Emergencies, said. British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL), an international company owned by the UK government, has defended the decision, which will recover 90 mt of reactor-grade uranium while, in effect, removing 10,600 drums of low-level radioactive waste from its Springfields reactor plant near Preston, in northwest England, for disposal in a uranium mine in the Central Asian country. The plan has been condemned by activists who argue the impoverished former Soviet republic does not have the resources or expertise to safely reprocess nuclear waste. "Kyrgyzstan already has problems with uranium tailing storage facilities, especially in [the southern town of] Mailu-Suu, which are in a critical condition because of a lack of funding since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Importing more waste to fund this clean-up sets a very bad precedent for finding solutions to environmental problems across the globe," Pete Roche, a nuclear consultant to Greenpeace UK, told IRIN from London. In February, Kyrgyz Prime Minister Nikolay Tanaev said that the government wouldn't allow radioactive waste into the country. "The country first needs to solve problems regarding its own uranium waste sites," he said. His comments came after a series of public protests at government plans to process uranium from Germany. There are a number of radioactive waste dumps in the country - a legacy of the Soviet era - that need to rehabilitated, with the ones in the southern town of Mailu-Suu being particularly vulnerable to floods and possible landslides. BNFL plans to send the radioactive waste to the Kara Balta uranium mining and processing facility in northern Kyrgyzstan, 60 km west of the capital, Bishkek. Kara Balta is one of the few plants capable of separating the uranium from the waste, according to BNFL. The uranium will be extracted with acid and returned to the UK for reuse, while the remains will be disposed of down disused uranium mining facilities. The scheme has also been opposed by a coalition of social and environmental groups in Kyrgyzstan. "We are against this nuclear waste being brought here, it wont solve any economic problems and it's bad for Kyrgyzstan's development," Viacheslav Charskiy, head of Agat, a environmental NGO based in Bishkek, told IRIN. Other activists said they were concerned that while the government publicly opposes the proposal, the lure of hard currency may override environmental concerns.