Tatiana Gupalo, Director of Center for Underground Insulation Technologies of All-Russian Research and Development Institute of Industrial Technologies

– The key idea of the law is to guarantee safe treatment of radioactive waste

On June 26 the Expert Council for Legislative Support of the Nuclear Industry of the Energy Committee of the State Duma considered draft law on treatment of radioactive waste.

For a long time the companies Minsredmash (Soviet-time Ministry of Medium Machine Building) accumulated radioactive waste in storage facilities and kept delaying the resolution of the problem of their safe treatment. But, today, when everybody knows whose waste it is, who must pay for it and when it will be isolated, the state must solve this problem without delay lest it might be left for the coming generations.

Today, radioactive waste is scattered all over the country (almost each federal district has it waste). So, it is necessary to create a single system, which would cover the whole territory of Russia and would organize their collection and processing.

First of all, the law should confirm the responsibility of the state for the radioactive waste available in the country and determine the financial-economic basis of the system.

We all know that when our country was creating the “nuclear field” nobody was thinking about radioactive waste. Today, it is time to solve this problem and we must decide how we will finance and manage this work.

The single state system is also supposed to guarantee the safe and economically effective treatment of newly produced waste – and not only in the nuclear industry but also in some other sectors of the economy. As soon as we organize this system and decide where we will store all types of waste, we will no longer have to solve this problem over and over again in each specific case.

The final resolution of the problem of radioactive waste will substantially enhance the competitiveness of our nuclear power industry. I think that the public must support this law as its basic idea is to guarantee the protection of people and nature from radioactive waste.