Local environmentalists are working with their overseas counterparts to persuade Taiwan's government not to export radioactive waste to Russia.
To highlight the unsolved problems of radioactive waste management, Kao Cheng-yen (高成炎), a Green Party Taiwan candidate for legislator, has organized a series of activities. These included an international seminar on nuclear waste management that was held yesterday in Taipei.
Foreign environmentalists attending the seminar came from Greenpeace International and Russia's Ecodefense as well as the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center and Green Action in Japan, and the South Korean Federation for the environment.
Environmentalists say that rado-active waste management has been a big headache for many countries.
Russia's decision in June to accept spent fuel rods with high levels of radioactivity from other countries -- reportedly including Taiwan -- has drawn attention from the international community.
Foreign environmentalists said yesterday that Taiwan's intention to export radioactive waste to Russia has created a negative image of Taiwan as a rogue country in the international community. They stressed that such waste should be treated domestically.
"It's immoral to dump radioactive waste in other countries," said Tobias Muenchmeyer, a Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner.
He said diverse environmental groups have been campaigning since June in various countries, including South Korea and Taiwan, to abandon the idea of exporting radioactive waste.
The campaign to prevent Russia from becoming the world's nuclear waste dump will be highlighted next spring when victims living near the Mayak Reprocessing Plant in Russia will visit Asian countries, including Taiwan, to relate how have they suffered from the fuel-rod reprocessing industry.
On Sept. 29, 1957, a tank at the plant containing radioactive waste exploded, releasing several million curies of radioactivity into the atmosphere.
Thousands of square kilometers were polluted and thousands of people were resettled. Because of the explosion, comparable to the Chernobyl accident in 1984, a large amount of land near the plant is still contaminated.
Ecodefense's co-director, Vladimir Slivyak, said that even countries such as Russia had difficulties in dealing with radioactive waste.
Activists from the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union were critical that Taiwan has not come up with a plan to deal with an existing 200,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste and nearly 3,000 tonnes of spent fuel rods.
State-run Taipower (台電) is planning to build a final depository for low-level radioactive waste on the 0.6km2 Hsiaochiu Islet (小坵嶼), of Wuchiu township (烏坵) in Kinmen. An environmental impact assessment for the proposal is being evaluated.
Additionally, Taipower has signed a contract with a Russian research institute for a preliminary plan involving 5,000 barrels of low-level radioactive nuclear waste. Shipping the waste to Russia, however, has been held up by laws that ban the import of any nuclear waste.
As for a final depository for spent high-level fuel rods, the Atomic Energy Council will not decide a location until 2016 and a facility is not expected to be available until 2032.
Kao argued yesterday that a total halt to the operation of nuclear power plants was the only solution to the problem of dealing with radioactive waste. "Taiwan should stop producing such waste as early as possible," he said.
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