By Vlada Melkova, Russian Journal

The draft law, an amendment to Article 50 of the 1992 Law on Environmental Protection, was passed by the State Duma lower house of parliament in December by a vote of 319 to 39. After the February vote, it will need yet another Duma reading before it is sent to Russia's upper house, the Federation Council, for a final vote.

At stake, according to officials at the Atomic Energy Ministry, or Minatom, is more than $20 billion in revenues for the storage and recycling of spent radioactive materials -

funds that could be used to reenergize the sector's sagging infrastructure.

But activists argue that the amendments would turn Russia into the world's largest toxic dumping ground.

Moreover, they say, the influx of waste would overstress the country's decrepit transport and storage facilities, creating a potential ecological and humanitarian disaster in the waiting.

"This [draft law] is just a quick and foolish way to solve some of Russia's current economic problems," said Vladimir Kuznetsov, a former employee at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant who now works as an environmental advocate.

"More than 100 accidents [in the transport of radioactive materials] have happened in the United States since

1971," he said. "In Germany and Switzerland, leakage was found seeping from transport containers in 1997 and

1998 respectively. These things happened in developed countries, and Russia is even more ill-equipped to deal with them."

In order to get the waste to Russia's remote storage and recycling facilities - to restricted cities including Siberia's Krasnoyarsk-26 and Urals' Chelyabinsk-65 - containers would have to travel by aging trains that environmental advocates claim do not meet international safety standards.

The situation looks even worse, they argue, when examined in light of the poor condition of Russia's railways and their bad accident record.

Activists also say there are problems with the facilities. "Chelyabinsk-65 has technologies dating back to the

1950s," said Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of the ECODEFENSE! environmental organization, who added that in many instances the radioactive composition of foreign waste was not compatible to local recycling technology.

In addition, many of these facilities have already reached capacity, environmentalists say, with some pointing out that Krasnoyarsk's recycling and storage plant can only accept three tons more of radioactive material before shutdown, and Moscow's Kurchatov Institute, which also receives waste, is also almost full.

"What is Russia to do?" asked Slivyak. "We can't just dump the stuff or bury it in the ground."

In trying to put pressure on state officials to reject the bill, Slivyak and his advocacy group have organized protests and petitions directed at the State Duma and regional parliaments.

So far, he said, 10 regional Duma meetings, including in the Sakhalin, Volgograd, Sverdlovsk, Saratov and Karelia regions, have expressed sympathy for his campaign.

Meanwhile, Minatom officials have denied any dangers. "Why do these advocacy organizations blame our ministry and State Duma deputies for acting only in the interests of profit?" said Konstantin Leonov, a ministry spokesman. "Duma deputies are not incompetent, and in fact many of them have experience in the nuclear-energy sector.

"For the last 50 years, not a single serious accident has occurred," he added.

The battle reached its height before the State Duma's first reading of the draft law late last year, when environmental advocates brought a petition signed by 2.5 million people demanding a referendum on the matter.

Russian authorities rejected the petition on the grounds that 700,000 signatures were invalid.

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