A decision by Russia on Wednesday to accept shipments of nuclear waste from foreign countries may provide Taiwan Power Co (Taipower,
It was unclear, however, how much such a solution would cost and when the waste could be shipped to Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday approved a law on nuclear-waste imports, but proposed that such imports would be subject to approval by a special commission.
The law will come into effect once it is published in full in the state-run press in coming days, ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
The new law could reportedly earn Russia as much as US$22 billion over the next 10 years for reprocessing and storing approximately 20,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel.
In addition to Taiwan, countries such as India, China, South Korea, Japan and Switzerland are also interested in the proposal.
Taipower officials yesterday said that they are already looking into the possibility of signing an official contract with Russia to replace an existing memorandum, but denied that a new deal would mean Taiwan would ship more waste to Russia.
The memorandum was a preliminary plan which involves 5,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste.
However, Taipower officials told the Taipei Times yesterday that the policy of nuclear-waste management would not change until Taipower's contracted Russian agent provided them with details of the new law.
"We have to make sure exactly what kind of radioactive waste ... will be accepted," Huang Huei-yu (黃惠予), division head of Taipower's public affairs department, said yesterday.
It is estimated that Taipower has produced approximately 300,000 barrels of radioactive waste, including around 100,000 barrels of low-level waste stored on Orchid Island awaiting disposal.
Environmentalists both overseas and in Taiwan responded with fury to Putin's decision, saying that it would turn Russia into a dumping ground for the world's nuclear waste.
Russia's preliminary plan is to put most of the waste in storage at two of Russia's biggest nuclear sites: the 40-year-old Mayak site in the Urals and Krasnoyarsk in Siberia.
"After a series of accidents, Mayak is now considered to be the most contaminated spot on earth," Tobias Muenchmeyer of the environmental watchdog Greenpeace said.
"The state of both of these sites clearly demonstrates that Russia is the worst possible place to [take] nuclear waste."
Activists in Taiwan were also strongly opposed to the shipment of waste to Russia.
"It's unethical to dump waste in a neighboring area. This will definitely create a notorious image for Taiwan in the international community," said Pan Han-chiang (
Pan said that abandoning nuclear energy was the only way to ensure a safe future for Taiwan because existing technologies could do little to ensure the safety of nuclear power.
"[Moving] radioactive waste from Orchid Island to Russia does not mean that the problem of disposing nuclear waste will be solved," Pan said.
Traumatized by memories of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe, most Russians are firmly opposed to the idea of nuclear waste imports: an opinion poll earlier this year showed that 89 percent disapproved of the proposal.
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