ASTANA. A senior Kazakhstan official said on Monday, the vast but sparsely populated Central Asian state might boost revenues by burying imported low-radioactivity nuclear waste on its territory. 

Mukhtar Dzhakishev, head of the state nuclear firm Kazatomprom, told parliament that Kazakhstan might earn $30-40 billion in the next 25 to 30 years by storing foreign nuclear waste. 

Kazakhstan is the size of Western Europe but has a population of only 15 million. "This is a very lucrative business, and we may arrange deals under which the government receives annual bonuses worth $200-500 million,'' Dzhakishev told deputies. He said large amounts of waste could be buried in existing opencast uranium mines in the western Mangistau region and sophisticated storage technology would not be needed. "Barrels with compressed low-radioactivity waste are received, put in pits and covered with soil, and there is no radiation on the surface,'' he said. 

Dzhakishev said Kazakhstan did not possess technology which would allow it to process and store high-radioactivity waste, but it could easily handle low-radioactivity waste like gloves, overalls, and other material from foreign nuclear power plants. It was not immediately clear whether or when the government would submit a draft law to parliament. Dzhakishev gave no time frame or details of possible deals with foreign nuclear plants. Earlier this month the lower chamber of the Russian parliament adopted a bill that is likely to open Russia to imports of spent nuclear fuel. 

Environmentalists and the public in Russia who say it could turn the country into a nuclear dump have given the bill, expected to be passed into law. Environmental concerns are also strong in Kazakhstan, whose northeastern Semipalatinsk region underwent hundreds of atmospheric, surface and underground nuclear tests in 1949-89. The Soviet-era tests are blamed by scientists for a rising number of cancer cases and birth defects among local people.