Germany sends 600 tons of nuclear waste to Russia
A train with so-called “uranium tailings”, byproducts of the enrichment process used to make fuel for nuclear power plants, was sent to Russia from a uranium enrichment plant in the German city of Gronau, reports MBH Media news outlet. The 12-car train will deliver about 600 tons of nuclear waste from Germany to the port of Amsterdam, after which the cargo will be shipped to St. Petersburg.
According to Russian organization Ecodefense, the cargo will be further transported by train to the city of Novouralsk in the Sverdlovsk region. Since the beginning of 2020, more than 3,500 tons of uranium tailings have been imported to Russia.
German environmentalists are also against the export of nuclear waste to Russia and other countries. Protest actions will be held along the cargo’s transport route in Munster, Ochtrup and Gronau.
At the end of 2019, Greenpeace reported that from 2019 to 2022, as part of contract between Techsnabexport (subsidiary of Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom) and the German-British-Dutch company Urenco, 12,000 tons of uranium tailings will be sent from Germany to Russia. That's more than a thousand containers and about 20 trains.