NOVOSIBIRSK, October 13 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's state-controlled civilian nuclear energy corporation Rosatom rejected on Tuesday French media reports claiming that spent fuel from French power plants was being stored at an open-air site in Siberia.
The story on an open-air nuclear waste site in Russia was run on Monday by France's Liberation newspaper and the Reuters news agency.
According to the reports, EDF, the main French electricity company, sends some of its nuclear waste to a center near the west Siberian city of Tomsk. However, the story said there is no technology for processing the waste, and so the depleted uranium is merely dumped in an open site.
"The French publication most likely meant the dumping of uranium hexafluoride, which is not radioactive waste. It is formed as a residual material from the process of uranium enrichment and as far as radiation goes it is several times less radioactive than natural uranium," Rosatom spokesman Sergei Novikov said.
Liberation claimed that 13% of waste from nuclear power plants owned by EDF was stored there at the site.
However, Novikov said that Rosatom had no contracts with EDF on the importation of any nuclear materials into Russia.
