Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law denouncing the Framework Agreement on the Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Programme in the Russian Federation (MNEPR) and the Protocol on Matters of Claims, Litigation and Indemnification to the Agreement.
The MNEPR Agreement and the Protocol to it were signed on May 21, 2003. The documents were signed by Russia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States (while the United States did not accede to the Protocol), the European Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. It entered into force for the Russian Federation on April 14, 2004.
The participating countries of the program pledged to cooperate in the safe handling of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste on the territory of Russia. The work at the expense of the Northern Dimension fund, which was managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, included, in particular:
- solving problems of complex disposal of decommissioned nuclear submarines and nuclear technological service vessels;
- creating infrastructure for handling spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste;
- rehabilitation of the territories of former Russian Navy bases, in particular, in Guba Andreeva and the village of Gremikha.
The accompanying documents to the law on denunciation state that the agreement and the protocol at one time made it possible to significantly reduce radiation pollution in northwestern Russia, but, "according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, cooperation within the framework of the agreement was actually suspended back in 2015-2017".
It is worth noting that, with participation in the program, Russia began to actively use its own technologies for the disposal of dangerous heritage from Rosatom to complete the rehabilitation of the territories of former military bases. In particular, in 2024, the state corporation completed the removal of nuclear fuel from the former coastal base of the Navy "Gremikha" in the Murmansk region, this project took more than 10 years. At this facility, Rosatom for the first time in the world demonstrated the technology of disassembling uranium-beryllium active zones of nuclear-powered ship reactors into components, their transportation and complete processing.
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