2001 CPEO Military List Archive

From: marylia@earthlink.net
Date: 1 Mar 2001 18:03:20 -0000
Reply: cpeo-military
Subject: [CPEO-MEF] Alert! Russian colleagues' letter for sign on/complete text
 
Dear peace and enviro colleagues:

        This follows up on the short action alert I sent you on Tuesday.
Here is the full text of the letter written by our Russian colleagues --
which we are now asking you to sign on. Please sign on by March 14. In sum,
the letter advocates that Russia not change its current law to allow the
importation of nuclear waste from foreign countries.

Let me clarify a few things about the letter.
        (1) I originally sent an email to our friends in the Movement for
Nuclear Safety in Chelyabinsk asking what, if anything, we could do to help
them in their efforts. I received a reply that they would craft a letter
for us to circulate internationally for groups to sign -- with the
exception of U.K. and French groups (as the Russian government would
discount their opposition as concern about competition for the spent
nuclear fuel reprocessing dollars).
        (2) I received two copies of the same basic letter -- one version
from the Movement for Nuclear Safety and another from CAEI.
        (3) To make absolutely sure that the letter we are now signing gets
used in a culturally appropriate way, I plan to send the letter with all
the sign ons to the Movement for Nuclear Safety (since I began by asking
them) and let them decide exactly how to use it. What I mean here is that I
as a U.S. person will not be sending it directly to their Duma -- the
Movement for Nuclear Safety can do that and/or make some additional use of
it.
        (4) I have made only minimal changes to the text I was presented
with by Movement for Nuclear Safety and CAEI. To be specific, I made two
substantive changes. First, in paragraph 3, I deleted the part of a
sentence that said each nation should reprocess its own spent nuclear fuel
-- I did this simply because my organization does not advocate reprocessing
in the U.S., and therefore we cannot say that. I left the rest of the
sentence in that said each nation should store its own waste and not stash
it in someone else's backyard. That concept was the heart of the original
sentence, in any event. The other change I made was to add a short
paragraph near the end of the letter to say that we international groups
signing this letter work on these issues within our respective nations as
well as globally. I added this because it is my (and my organization's)
strong belief that we should not advocate (or lecture) in other countries
anything that we are not willing to work on in our own.

        I could explain further, but do not wish to burden you all with an
overlong email. The important thing is the letter -- and your sign on
before March 14 -- so here it is...  Peace, Marylia Kelley

An Appeal To:

the Speaker of the Russian State Duma
and the Chairmen of the following Duma factions:
Communist Party of the Russian Federation Unity
Liberal Democratic Party of Russia
Fatherland-All Russia
Union of Right Forces
Yabloko
Agrarian Deputy Group
People's Deputy Group
Russia's Regions Deputy Group

Dear Deputies of the Russian State Duma,

Save your beautiful country from becoming a nuclear wasteland!

As representatives of ___# of non-governmental organizations around the
globe , and as world citizens, we urge you to reject the law on "Special
Ecological Problems on the Environmental Rehabilitation of
Radioactively-Polluted Regions of the Russian Federation, Financed from
Revenue from International Trade in Nuclear Fuel," and the related
amendments to the law on "The Use of Nuclear Energy," and to the law on
"The Protection of the Environment." We strongly believe that approving
such laws will not only bring irreparable harm to your country, but will
threaten the safety of other countries.

Why, you may ask, do we express ourselves so forcefully about a matter
seemingly so far away from us? Why are we - citizens of other countries -
against the importation of radioactive nuclear fuel into Russia?

First of all, as a matter of environmental principle and justice, we feel
that spent nuclear fuel generated by a country should be kept isolated from
the environment and stored, as safely as possible, by that nation - and not
stashed in someone else's backyard.

It is especially unethical to take advantage of a country's socio-economic
crisis by offering them chimerical profits in exchange for storing
materials that present serious dangers to their population. Each country
must take financial, technical and social responsibility for its own waste
products.

The history of the nuclear power industry shows that spent nuclear fuel has
been primarily used to extract plutonium. However, today plutonium is no
longer needed for military purposes, and the use of plutonium as fuel for
commercial nuclear reactors is not profitable.

Once created, plutonium cannot be used for fuel for nuclear reactors for
decades. In the meantime, storing one ton of plutonium costs, according to
various sources, costs from $1 million to $5 million a year. According to
these costs, then, storing the amount of plutonium that your Ministry of
Atomic Energy intends to create will require annual expenditures ranging
from $200 million to $1 billion. This calculation is based on figuring that
200 tons of plutonium can be produced from the 20,000 tons of nuclear waste
that would be brought into Russia. This transaction becomes especially
unprofitable if you take into consideration the environmental and public
health consequences of importing nuclear waste.

Moreover, we should remember the lessons of history with respect to the
reprocessing of nuclear spent fuels, i.e. both the large swaths of
territory all over the world already polluted in past years and the costs
of rehabilitating this land. Already these costs are a drain on the state
budgets of our respective governments, costs which will only grow for
Russia if it produces more plutonium. Plutonium ends up being an incredible
burden even for the richest countries.

We understand that in the past decade there have been several incidents
where nuclear fuel stored in Russia has disappeared. Therefore, we feel
justified in raising concerns about control over the radioactive materials
your government is proposing to import. Needless to say, this plutonium
could fall into the hands of the enemies of peace.

We public interest organizations who sign this letter wish you to
understand that we work on these difficult nuclear waste issues in our
respective nations - as well as globally. On a regular basis, we
communicate with our various governments regarding spent nuclear fuel's
potential environmental, health and proliferation risks. We do not write
only to Russia on this topic.

Finally, in our country spent nuclear fuel is called nuclear waste. It is
not a valuable substance, as some of our energy officials still like to
claim, but a danger to the health of our land and people.

Setting aside the various economic and financial questions connected to the
market in radioactive materials, we wish to impress upon you the gravity of
the danger in trading in nuclear waste and remind you of your
responsibility before future generations.

Thus, importing nuclear waste presents serious dangers to your public
health, environment, economy and even national security as well as that of
other countries.

We therefore hope that you will try to receive and will carefully study all
available information on this question - including the opinions of
independent and unbiased experts - when this bill is again under
consideration in March 2001.

Please consider the many people both in Russia and in other countries that
will be affected by your actions.

Respectfully yours,

Marylia Kelley,
executive director,
Tri-Valley CAREs,
Livermore, CA USA

YOUR NAME, TITLE AND YOUR GROUP'S NAME, CITY, STATE, REGION OR PROVINCE AND
COUNTRY GO HERE.

THANK YOU TO THE 2 DOZEN GROUPS WHO ALREADY RESPONDED TO MY SHORT EMAIL
YESTERDAY WITH YOUR SIGN ON PERMISSION. I HOPE MANY DOZENS MORE CAN SIGN ON
AFTER SEEING THE TEXT.

PLEASE LET TRI-VALLEY CAREs KNOW BY MARCH 14 IF YOU CAN SIGN-ON. WE WANT TO
SEND THIS LETTER WITH SIGN ONS TO THE MOVEMENT FOR NUCLEAR SAFETY IN
CHELYABINSK, RUSSIA VERY SOON AFTER MARCH 14. THE MATTER IS SCHEDULED TO
COME UP IN THE DUMA AGAIN MARCH 22, 2001, AND WE WANT TO GIVE OUR RUSSIAN
COLLEAGUES TIME TO USE THIS LETTER IN THE MANNER THEY THINK WILL DO THE
MOST GOOD. THANKS.

ends

Marylia Kelley
Tri-Valley CAREs
(Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)
2582 Old First Street
Livermore, CA USA 94550

<http://www.igc.org/tvc/> - is our web site, please visit us there!

(925) 443-7148 - is our phone
(925) 443-0177 - is our fax

Working for peace, justice and a healthy environment since 1983, Tri-Valley
CAREs has been a member of the nation-wide Alliance for Nuclear
Accountability in the U.S. since 1989, and is a co-founding member of the
Abolition 2000 global network for the elimination of nuclear weapons, the
U.S. Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the Back From the Brink
campaign to get nuclear weapons taken off hair-trigger alert.



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