France dumps 13% of its nuclear waste in Russia

EDF denies sending nuclear waste to Russia
Mon Oct 12, 2009 12:39pm EDT

* Daily says 13 pct of French waste dumped in Russia
* EDF says radioactive waste is kept in France
* EDF says only recyclable spent uranium sent to Russia

By Muriel Boselli

PARIS, Oct 12 (Reuters) - EDF (EDF.PA) is sending to Russia spent nuclear fuel that needs to be reprocessed, the French nuclear power producer said on Monday, denying a French press report that it was using Siberia to dump nuclear waste.

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Earlier on Monday an EDF spokeswoman had told Reuters the company was sending nuclear waste to Russia and that 10 to 20 percent of it was recycled and sent back to be be used in French power plants. The spokeswoman later clarified that she was referring to spent fuel, not to radioactive waste.

Liberation said on Monday that 13 percent of the radioactive waste produced by EDF's nuclear power plants was stored in open-air spaces in a Siberian town where access to journalists is prohibited.

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Liberation said it based its information on an investigation due to be broadcast on television channel Arte on Tuesday. France, where 58 nuclear reactors produce 80 percent of the country's electricity, has not found permanent underground storage with the capacity to bury nuclear energy waste it has generated in the past three decades and the waste it will produce in the future.

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EDF 'sends used nuclear material' to Siberia
EDF, the French firm which owns eight of Britain's nuclear power stations has shipped hundreds of tons of used radioactive material to Russia.

By Henry Samuel in Paris
Published: 6:30AM BST 13 Oct 2009

More than 1,500 tons of spent fuel produced by the power company EDF was discovered in metal containers near a Siberian town.

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However, according to nuclear experts cited by the Libération newspaper, thousands of tons of that fuel actually end up 5,000 miles away in Seversk, Siberia. They claimed that polluted, depleted uranium sits in an open-air "parking area" in metal containers and is visible from satellite images.

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"No nuclear waste (is sent) to Russia," said a spokesman for the company.

"Only recyclable uranium, reprocessed from EDF's nuclear reactors, is sent to Russia to be enriched," he said. The company added that according to international "contracts relating to uranium", the depleted uranium was now the property of Russia, not France.

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