Putin's swan song before leaving office: turning Russia into a nuclear outhouse

[bananas]

http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2008/putin_legacy

Putin’s swan song before leaving office: turning Russia into a nuclear outhouse

MOSCOW - In the hours preceding what was hailed as yet another “democratic transfer of power” by the western media, as Vladimir Putin handed the reins of power to his hand picked successor Dmitry Medvedev, an agreement for civilian nuclear cooperation was signed in the shadow of the pomp of the new president’s inauguration and the nuclear missiles to be comically and anachronistically paraded across Red Square on Victory Day.

Vladimir Slivyak, Charles Digges, 12/05-2008

The US and Russian governments signed a long awaited agreement that will allow the US nuclear industry to make money off Russia’s industry and get rid of it’s radioactive waste by sending it to their Cold War foe. The agreement was touted by more credulous media as a surprise breakthrough harbinger of a new peace and a new age.

Medvedev was sworn in on Wednesday. But after eight years under the rule of a former KGB officer, many democratic freedoms previously enjoyed by Russians were overturned. Environmental organisations, which were traditionally on the vanguard of the democratic movement, found themselves pitted against authorities, protesting the import of radioactive waste into Russia and discovered their role in the new society to be significantly weakened. They awoke to find themselves operating in the margins and on the edge of survival.

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Looming behind the handshakes and the swell new fountain pens with which the agreement was signed laid the fine print, which decimated on the level of the Russia Federal Government any remaining obstacles to opening up Russia's borders, with a Texas-style “come on down,” to the long term import and storage of most of the world’s spent nuclear fuel – 70 to 80 percent of which is controlled by the United States.

Some 200,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel has accrued throughout the world since the beginning of the nuclear age. Fiftenn thousand of it is in Russia. For the past 30 years, the United States has been researching, designing and digging the fruitless long-term geologic storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Despite the fact that the sum total spent on this project so far exceeds $20 billion, no progress is visible. In fact, accord to shamefaced admissions by the US Department of Energy (DOE), if Yucca Mountain were to open tomorrow, another would have to be dug almost immediately to begin to accommodate the American SNF that has been piling up since the Yucca Mountain project was announced.

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[MercutioATC]

1. Does anybody really think Putin is actually "leaving office"?

Yes, he's officially leaving office, but is there any doubt that he'll still be running the show?

[Javaman]

2. The next election, I bet he will create a new position for himself...

"commissar in charge of everything".