Moscow Plans to Scrap 2003 Arctic Nuclear Clean Up Accord with EU and Norway

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – The Russian government has approved and sent to the Duma a draft law that will denounce the Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Program in the Russian Federation putting to an end Western-supported programs to clean up sites where Soviet officials had dumped nuclear waste in the Arctic.
    That accord, signed by the Russian Federation, the European Union and Norway in 2003, helped clean up nuclear waste in the Arctic and protected Europe from radiation leaks from aging Soviet-era storage containers (interfax-russia.ru/moscow/news/kabmin-podderzhal-denonsaciyu-ramochnogo-soglasheniya-o-mnogostoronney-yaderno-ekologicheskoy-programme).
    But it also had the effect of integrating Russia into international environmental principles and practices. Now, apparently, all progress in that direction has been ended and Russian practices shifted into reverse. As Aleksandr Nikitin of the Bellona Foundation put it, “it’s amazing how in two and a half years you can destroy everything achieved over decades.”
    For background on this problem and an indication of what will now be lost, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/flooding-in-russia-threatens-to-spread.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/05/moscows-immediate-goal-for-arctic.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/11/hundreds-of-abandoned-ships-rusting.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/08/moscow-finally-addressing-its-nuclear.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/delayed-action-mines-under-russia.html.