Dutch Uranium Enricher Under Fire Over "dumping Waste" In Siberia

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The uranium enrichment company Urenco was accused Monday of using Russian facilities to "dump" depleted uranium from its plant at Almelo in the eastern Netherlands following an investigative radio report that highlighted the longstanding practice.

Urenco, jointly owned by Dutch, German and British holding companies, was reported by the programme on public radio to hand over some 3,500 tons of poisonous uranium hexafloride to the Russian authorities every year.

The gaseous compound is held in steel flasks in Novouralsk, Angarsk and Seversk in Siberia.

Diederik Samsom of the Labour Party, which is currently in talks to form a new coalition government, called on the environment secretary of the outgoing government, Pieter van Geel of the Christian Democrats, to provide an explanation.

"From a legal point of view it might well be alright, but politically and morally one raises one's eyebrows," Samson said after the programme was broadcast Monday.

Urenco director Huub Rakhorst rejected the allegations as "exaggerated," saying Urenco scientists had inspected the Russian facilities and that there was no reason for concern.

Urenco conducts first-stage enrichment, transporting some 5,000 tons of depleted uranium to Russia for further processing to increase the proportion of the radioactive U235 isotope.

Urenco takes back the enriched uranium, but up to 70 per cent remains in long-term storage in Russia as depleted uranium.

Greenpeace expressed concern, and physicist Kees Andriesse told the broadcast the practice was nothing more than "dumping waste."

He rejected claims by Rakhorst that the depleted uranium was being stored for use in future "breeder" power plants, saying the theory behind such plants had been known for decades but had been found to be impracticable.

The depleted uranium should be returned to its source in the Netherlands, he said.

"It's a kind of dumping. It now goes to Russia, and we know that it is carelessly treated. You are responsible for your own rubbish; you don't throw it away somewhere else," Andriesse said.

The centrifuge facility at Almelo is where the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, illicitly acquired secret information while working there in the mid-1970s.