OREANDA-NEWS. In 2019, Russia again began to receive radioactive waste from the Urenco uranium enrichment plant located in the German city of Gronau. This is reported by the Russian branch of Greenpeace and the organization Ecodefense with reference to a document of the Ministry of Economy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

On October 22, the Bundestag deputy Hubertus Zdebel said that Urenco plans to send 12 thousand tons of radioactive waste to Russia by 2022, as provided by the agreement with the affiliate of Russian company Techsnabexport. According to the Berlin newspaper Die Tageszeitung, from May till September 2019, 3.6 thousand tons of waste had been already delivered.

“This is a cynical and immoral business. Urenco needs it to save billions of euros… It’s striking that Rosatom (State corporation. – Ed.) is ready to make money from the burial of… foreign waste, which is nonsense in any civilized country,” the representative of Ecoprotection Vladimir Slivyak said.

Greenpeace noted that in 2009, after a protest campaign lasting several years, Urenco and Rosatom refused to continue importing radioactive waste.

“Russia should not become a radioactive repository for the rest of the world. We demand to stop importing uranium tailings into Russia immediately, publish documents on these transactions and punish the persons who guilty of entering into illegal transactions,” Rashid Alimov, an expert at the Russian branch of Greenpeace said.

The representative of Techsnabexport company controlled by Rosatom told to RBC information agency that safety is a key priority for the state corporation and any activity in the handling of nuclear materials is realized according with international and national standards.