By BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA
The Associated Press

The import of nuclear waste to Russia for reprocessing makes the country an easy target for nuclear terrorists because of the weakness of its system of protecting dangerous facilities, Russian Greenpeace and a liberal party officials said Friday.

Sergei Mitrokhin, a lawmaker from the liberal Yabloko party, and two Greenpeace officials claimed they entered a secret nuclear waste dump in Krasnoyarsk Kray in the Russian Far East with no problem. Russia's system of nuclear safety was "nonexistent," they told a news conference.
Mitrokhin said Russia had neither financial nor technological capabilities to store used nuclear fuel from foreign countries. Most of the 96 nuclear facilities, including research centers, in Russia are not getting any money from the federal budget to ensure reliable security, he said.

In July, President Vladimir Putin signed into law a controversial plan to allow the import of spent nuclear fuel for storage and reprocessing. The plan's advocates say Russia could earn dlrs 20 billion over the next decade, importing some 22,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel.

Putin has ordered a special commission to control the import of nuclear waste to be set up, but criticis of the practice of important nuclear waste say Russia will become the world's dumping grounds for other country's nuclear leftovers.

"Russia becomes a potential target for terrorists' retaliation acts," Mitrokhin said. He said that being a member of the international anti-terrorism coalition Russia had to bear responsibility for safety of its nuclear facilities.

Russian Greenpeace activist Ivan Blokov said greater transparency was needed in activities of the Atomic Energy Ministry, which claims that all its nuclear facilities are protected. "It is outside any state control and does what it likes," Blokov said.

The Zheleznogorsk mining and chemical combine in Krasnoyarsk Kray at the moment stores used nuclear fuel from Bulgaria and Ukraine. Greenpeace has sent letters about its findings in Zheleznogorsk to the Federal Security Service and the General Prosecutor's Office.

In a separate development, Radio Deutsche Welle has reported that Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant paid 25m dollars to the Rossiya Mine-Chemical Combine in Zheleznogor for the storage of spent nuclear fuel. This represents 68 per cent of the amount the Kozloduy N-plant owes.

The Russian side announced that the first shipment, weighing 43 tonnes, was received last November from Bulgaria.

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