Russian Nuclear Waste Stores Almost 100% Full - Official

Jun 23 - Daily News Bulletin; Moscow - English

Russia's technical oversight authority, Rostekhnadzor, said the country's storage facilities for radioactive wastes and spent fuel are almost 100% full, the authority's acting chief Andrei Malyshev told a Wednesday news conference.

Work should be intensified to build new storage facilities, he said.

Russia has accumulated 650 million cubic meters of liquid and solid radioactive wastes, over 99% of which are concentrated at facilities of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency. Most of them are low radioactivity wastes, he said.

One of the greatest problems is the dumping of liquid wastes into open bodies of water, as in the case of the Mayak production association, he said.

A comprehensive program exists to upgrade Mayak, Malyshev said. If it is implemented, Mayak could stop dumping wastes into open bodies of water by 2010. Meanwhile, certain limits on such dumping have been set, he said.