Germany is set to fly 200 kilogrammes of enriched uranium to Russia for reprocessing before the end of the year, the German environment ministry said on Saturday. The waste was produced by a Soviet-era research reactor in Rossendorf, near Dresden in the former East Germany, which was closed down in 1991.
The waste, which is not weapons-grade, will be processed in Russia under an agreement which provides for nuclear material from the Cold War to be returned to its country of origin.
The waste will be flown to Russia on December 1 in a specially-adapted plane, according to press reports, but the ministry refused to confirm the date.
Experts say it is safer to transport enriched uranium by air than by train.
"That way less can happen to it than on the road or on train tracks," Udo Helwig from the German association for nuclear technology and analysis (VKTA) told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.
Environmentalists this month staged a protest in Moscow against the regular shipments of German nuclear waste to Russia.
Source: Agence France-Presse
