URENCO at 52
On March 4th it was 52 years since the founding of URENCO with Treaty of Almelo.
Aside from rereading out previous statements about our opossition to URENCO we read out the following new one from Radiation Free Lakeland
‘ Radiation Free Lakeland stand in solidarity with Close Capenhurst and would like to thank the Close Capenhurst campaigners for representing all of us who are impacted by the nuclear waste industry from its obscene beginnings in uranium mining to its ‘dangerous to all life on earth’ end product which is long lived nuclear wastes. We have long been concerned about the exports of Uranium Hexafluoride from URENCO Capenhurst (and Springfields) to Russia and other countries, one mans nuclear waste is another mans nuclear weapon.
In Cumbria we are being asked to “look again” at the dumping of High Level Nuclear wastes in our flawed and complex geology – this time even the subsea area is on the table including the Irish Sea area either side of the controversial coal mine plan.
Incredibly the coal mine boss Mark Kirkbride is giving the UK government advice on costings – not only on the digging of very deep holes for Geological Disposal of High level Nuclear wastes but also on the digging of not so deep holes for Near Surface Disposal of Intermediate Level Nuclear Wastes.
We have set up a new campaign to fight these plans called Lakes Against Nuclear Dump and we are calling for the dumping of nuclear wastes to cease – everywhere! The first step is to Just Stop Nuclear.’
Check out Lakes Against Nuclear Dump
URENCO Uranium to Russia.
The following is a press release from Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg in Germany.
Gronauer Uran in umkämpften Ukraine-AKW?
Uranium waste export from UK to Russia stopped?
A few days ago – still after the beginning of the war – Urenco wanted to use the Russian nuclear freighter “Mikhail Dudin” to bring depleted uranium waste from the British uranium enrichment plant Capenhurst to Russia for final storage. The deal apparently fell through at the last minute after protests from Germany and the Netherlands. A Dutch Urenco spokeswoman told the newspaper Tubantia that Urenco would “of course” comply with EU, UK and US sanctions. But does this about-face also apply to uranium waste transports from Gronau to Russia?
Uranium enriched in Gronau in Münsterland is probably also being used in the fiercely contested nuclear power plants in Ukraine. This is the fear of anti-nuclear initiatives, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate IPPNW and the Federal Association of Citizens’ Initiatives for Environmental Protection (BBU). They therefore demand that the German government immediately stop the delivery of uranium from Gronau and of fuel elements from Lingen to Russia and Ukraine. This also means a binding end to uranium waste exports from Gronau to Russia.
For several years, the German-Dutch-British uranium enricher Urenco has been Ukraine’s main supplier of enriched uranium. This is then processed into fuel elements by the US company Westinghouse in Västeras, Sweden, from where it is exported to Ukraine. According to the export list of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, the most recent export licences for enriched uranium from Gronau to the Swedish fuel element factory were issued on 1 February 2022 and 2 December 2021.
The transports from Gronau to Russia were stopped for a couple of years, but take place constantly nowadays.
Civil Nukiller Police
During Febuary American Soldiers from their Nuclear Disablement Team 2 (NDT 2) toured the CNC Griffin Park Tactical Training Centre at Sellafield during a recent visit