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Uranium waste: Russian post for German state prosecutor
Aktionsbündnis Münsterland gegen Atomanlag - 29.11.2007 00:02
A year ago Russian opponents of atomic power filed a criminal complaint in Münster against Urenco Deutschland, alleging illegal transportation of atomic waste from Gronau to Russia. The state attorney’s office started to investigate, but wanted to be quickly rid of the politically charged case. In May it stopped its investigation of the globally leading uranium enrichment firm. Now the Russian activists are demanding resumption of the investigation and have engaged a lawyer from Münster.
The background is the delivery by now of more than 21,000 tonnes of depleted uranium from Gronau to Russia. Depleted uranium (DU) is a waste product created in uranium enrichment. Urenco and the licensing and supervisory bodies in North-Rhine Westphalia and Berlin claim that the DU is valuable recyclable material, but there is no commercial world market for it. It is used for armour-breaching ammunition and to dilute weapons-grade uranium. Urenco claims the DU is re-enriched in Russia to return to Gronau. The reality is that since 2003 Urenco has not imported uranium from Russia. Instead, RWE Nukem became the importer of natural uranium.
The power companies RWE and EON own the German shares of Urenco. The others are owned by the British and Dutch governments. Urenco has become world market leader and is expanding aggressively into France and in the USA. Massive expansion construction is due in Gronau and just across the border at Almelo in Holland. The cheap atomic waste “disposal” in Russia has earned Urenco a lot of money and decidedly co-funded the expansion. The corporation as a whole has transported more than 80,000 tonnes of DU to Russia, where the drums are rusting in the open air.
For some time now resistance against the waste transports has stirred in Russia. Before that, they were totally secret in the country. The Russian government recently pledged to make no new import deals when the present contracts run out between 2008 and 2010. That is a first success of the international resistance.
But the struggle continues. Already in January the next uranium waste train can set out from Gronau to Russia. That is why we support the criminal complaint of the Russian environmentalists against Urenco. For, it’s not the atomic opponents that belong in the docks of this republic, but those responsible in the atomic industry who, without batting an eye, tip tens of thousands of tonnes of atomic waste outside people’s doors in Russia.
(Translated by Diet Simon, German original at  http://de.indymedia.org/2007/11/200781.shtml)
 E-Mail: atomstopp@citykom.net  Website: http://www.urantransport.de
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