Moscow (dpa) – Russia's government is planning to transport 22,000 tons of nuclear waste across the country along a route passing dozens of cities and towns, the spokesman of a local environmental group said on Monday. Russia's national atomic energy monopoly Rosatom plans to run some 300 trains loaded with spent nuclear fuel from a power station near the Baltic port city St Petersburg to a newly-completed hazardous waste storage facility near the city Zheleznogorsk, some 4,100 kilometers east of Moscow, a statement from the Russian organization Ecodefence said. The fissile waste would pass 15 major Russian cities and dozens towns en route to storage. The shipments would end in 2025, the statement said. “The danger of nuclear waste, the poor condition of the tracks and the ill-equipped security personnel make these nuclear waste trains a veritable Chernobyl on wheels”, said Vladimir Slivyak, an organization spokesman. “We are not dealing with a one-time shipment of nuclear waste, but with a program that will run for more than ten years through several Russian regions,” he said. The Moscow-St Petersburg corridor is one of Russia's most densely-populated regions. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/Ut1hc Tags: Chernobyl, Disaster, Nuclear Section: Environment, Going Green, Latest News
