Protection
Political ecologists, who apparently — judging by their statements — intend to solve the world's environmental problems, have claimed the color green for themselves and, instead of helping to resolve ecological problems, have chosen to wage war against productive forces.
This particular trend in ecology is reactionary and deeply harmful. One must understand that the environment in the modern world will be in good shape only if production develops. There is an illusion that if we shut down enterprises, factories, chemical plants, nuclear power stations, machine-building plants, and aluminum smelters — the ones that smoke and belch fumes — the ecological situation will improve dramatically. The opposite will happen. If you create an ideal place for people where they only consume, appropriating and assimilating the products of others' labor or ready-made natural goods in whatever way they please, sustaining their own existence, while all the factories are moved outside the residential zone, the environment will suffer all the same. For it to become normal — "bearable" — powerful energy production is needed: to build and operate water-treatment facilities, waste-processing plants, and machinery to keep nature clean. The economy must therefore not only satisfy people's immediate consumer needs but simultaneously offset the impact of industrial activity and human life on the environment. The Rhine, the largest river in Western Europe, was cleaned up only when energy production reached a scale incomparably greater than what existed in the 1950s.
One of the key indicators of a country's ecological and economic capacity is the level of development of its energy sector. This is especially important for Russia. In Germany, one can in principle live without heating — wrap yourself in warm blankets and you will get through the winter fine. In Russia that is impossible. From November — and in some places from October — through to March or April, Russia cannot do without heating.
The development of the fuel and energy sector today cannot be conceived without nuclear energy. Nuclear energy encompasses the mining of uranium ore, the production of nuclear fuel, its transport, its use at nuclear power plants, and its storage, including technological storage. Long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is now widespread, but SNF also needs to be reprocessed. SNF is a powerful energy resource. And only with the help of energy production — including nuclear — can we today clean up all the accumulated contamination, including radioactive contamination: the pollutants and waste, paradoxical as this may sound. Unfortunately, some 700 million cubic meters of such waste have accumulated. Moreover, most of these radioactive wastes were generated not by nuclear power generation but through the implementation of military programs — the atomic bomb and submarines. The share of contamination attributable to nuclear power generation amounts to thousandths of a percent of all radioactive waste. The moment has come when the development of our science and technology makes it possible to use already-spent nuclear fuel as fresh fuel after low-cost technological processing. In this way, several problems are solved at once — ecological, resource-conservation, and fuel-supply problems — and nuclear energy advances toward a closed fuel cycle.
In the nuclear reactors currently in widespread use, conditions are created for releasing the energy of uranium-235, which constitutes only hundredths of a percent of the ore extracted. Scientists today dream of thermonuclear energy, where temperatures of 100 million degrees must be sustained, but no industrial technologies for this yet exist. A nuclear reactor does not require extreme temperatures. We are now moving toward the use of uranium-238; there is the BN-600 reactor, which makes it possible to breed weapons-grade plutonium from uranium. Most importantly, some 700 million cubic meters of radioactive waste remain on our territory, and it must be handled carefully, isolated, and reprocessed. Some of it lies in deep underground sealed strata, some at the bottom of lakes, some in submarines, some in tanks that are already nearing the end of their service life. The same is true in the United States, but there they spend $200 billion a year for these purposes. Meanwhile, the share of nuclear energy in total electricity consumption is 33% in America, 15% in Western Europe, 75% in France, and 13% in our country.
In the current situation, when Russia's entire budget amounts to $40 billion, there is no question of finding $10 billion a year for ecology — though we need it desperately — since we do not even have a single billion. Of the billion that was planned, only 150 million rubles, that is a mere $5 million, was actually allocated for 2001 — two thousand times less than what is needed. The Kurchatov Institute alone — located 5 km from the center of Moscow — requires 120 million rubles. And for now, this entire enterprise is sustained by the conscience of the institute's staff and by their already-negligible salaries.
In terms of technology, the nuclear sector is the most advanced in Russia, and its workers propose the following: let us deal with SNF. First, it is a problem for all countries. If you do not command the technology, it is simply waste. Incidentally, SNF accounts for only one-millionth of all the radioactive materials we have accumulated. Of course, SNF is the most active, but it is a matter of time: it needs to sit in storage for 30 years, after which its reprocessing becomes economically viable. The market situation is such that for every kilogram of SNF in fuel assemblies — zirconium tubes in which the SNF is sealed — the price is $1,500, or let us say $1,000. Of that, $100 will be spent on building a storage facility and storing the fuel for 40 years — storage costs just $1 per year. Another $400 per kilogram of SNF will go toward building a reprocessing plant. But since the fuel will not have sat for its 40 years yet, the plant is not needed for now, and these funds can be (carefully and reliably) used for other purposes. $100 will need to be spent on instrumentation, including the retrofitting of nuclear power plants. The next $100 per thousand — this represents contributions to regional and federal budgets. The remaining $300 is intended to be spent on ecological programs for the rehabilitation of radioactively contaminated territories.
If we import 20,000 tonnes of SNF over 20 years, we will receive this $20 billion. One might say that is not much, but even so, $7 billion can be directed toward ecological programs. At present, under no available scenario can we find funds even remotely approaching this sum for the rehabilitation of radioactively contaminated territories.
And at present no one can offer a realistic alternative. What are we to do with contaminated territories, and what is to be done with SNF? If this drags on for another 5 to 8 years, first we will lose our niche in this market, and second, the problems of Karachay, Murmansk, the Far East, and many other territories will continue to hang over us. In Moscow alone, for example, there are 5 sites requiring rehabilitation — the Kurchatov Institute, MIFI, MVTU, VNIIKhT, VNIINM — plus another 3 sites in the Moscow Region. In total, 33 constituent entities of the Russian Federation are involved in the project, all facing these problems.
The storage facilities for SNF that we have accumulated over more than 30 years of intensive nuclear energy development occupy a total area of just 1.5 hectares — that is, small areas, small volumes. The first thing to ask those who speak out so vigorously against this is: what exactly do you propose? Given Russia's technological capabilities, no other path is apparent. And in connection with the proposed earnings, the main challenge is to ensure that these funds are used for their designated purpose. All of them must be accounted for by the budget law each year. Oversight will be provided by the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation.
Including these revenues in the budget gives our industry the ability to carry out all the work and to compete for it — because England and France are already active in this market, and Japan is preparing to enter it as well. And all countries with nuclear energy will eventually seek to do the same. Unfortunately, certain political ecologists, whose primary goal is to gain popularity in their constituencies, attempt to frighten the public with these technologies. Part of the population, in the wake of the Chernobyl tragedy, was successfully stirred up against nuclear power stations — in Nizhny Novgorod, Tataria, and Bashkiria. As a result, 20 construction sites for new reactor units were stripped and looted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Even a unit at the Rostov plant that was 95% complete was halted, and it was not allowed to operate for ten years. What did this lead to? It led to the collapse of Atommash and the shutdown of a vast number of factories supplying equipment, instruments, and pumps. And that in turn meant an aggravation of social problems in a number of regions.
Much is said today about the need to create a favorable investment climate to revive our economy — so that exported capital returns and foreign investors begin to invest in it. I believe this is impossible. Significant foreign investment in Russia's economy, and especially in its ecology, is absolutely out of the question, because it is not in investors' interest. Therefore, I consider the key element of Russia's economic strategy to be raising effective demand by increasing the share of labor compensation in gross domestic product. This is not a trivial set of measures — not simply printing money as was done before. All efforts must be directed toward this system. Otherwise our economy will not develop. And we need to harmonize and narrow the gap in incomes between the wealthiest segment of the population and the rest of society. Second: protecting the domestic producer from imports and from exports — from the import of consumer goods and from the export of raw materials. That is the central credo. It does not conform to the canons of liberal economics, which, incidentally, has not existed in pure form anywhere in the world for a hundred years or more. Without raising labor compensation, all the reforms in housing, education, the military, pensions, and others are of little use — as long as Russia's main question remains unresolved: the question of wages. Not a single country has wages as low as $20–50. Until we escape this situation, nothing worthwhile will come of it. It must also be borne in mind that the share of the state budget in GDP in European countries is 40–43% or higher. America's share of the consolidated budget is 36%, while ours is 26–28%. And the budget means the army, teachers, doctors, culture, and science.
Our main energy base is located in the eastern part of the country — oil, gas, coal — while the population lives primarily in the European part. The share of nuclear energy in that territory now amounts to approximately 28–30%; without it, the energy supply of the country's western regions is simply inconceivable. Ten years were lost, nothing was done, and on top of that, our wreckers concentrated their main assault on the Ministry of Atomic Energy and its enterprises. Yet within the Ministry of Atomic Energy, electricity production increased by 25% over two years; the Rostov plant was completed; investments increased sixfold — through their own efforts, not from the budget, from which only 50 million rubles were received — a pittance. Wages in the sector doubled; investments in the sector's science increased fourfold; and all of this was self-funded. Electricity generation at nuclear power plants has reached the level of the Soviet period — 1990. What other branch of our production can show something like this? And a significant share of this was achieved through organizational measures — for example, eliminating all manner of intermediaries and combating theft. All of this was put into practice here: that same much-discussed debureaucratization, which in other spheres is still only being planned and scheduled. Opposition to the development of nuclear energy is a struggle against Russia, against its potential, against its scientific and technological elite.
Incidentally, nuclear energy today produces the cheapest electricity. In conventional thermal power generation using organic fuel, about 60% of the tariff consists of the cost of natural resources and fuel — a cost in which the natural-resource rent is a large component rather than labor compensation. By contrast, the cost of the natural component in nuclear energy is 15%, the greater part of which is the labor component. This is the actual realization of the concept of a base-renewable technology, a renewable resource — for thousands of years. Fuel reserves for all organic energy generation will last only a few decades, whereas for nuclear energy they will last millennia. Nuclear energy provides employment, since what matters most to it is a renewable resource — human labor — rather than raw material.