Russia's top nuclear official said that Moscow was considering participating in an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) project under which up to seven countries would store much of the world's nuclear waste.

"We are currently studying the project," Alexander Rumyantsev, the head of Russia's atomic energy agency, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Rumyantsev spoke at the start of a nuclear conference in the Russian capital.

The deputy head of the IAEA, Yury Sokolov, said international centres for nuclear waste were needed because "national programmes for treatment and burial ... are not an efficient way of resolving the problem of waste."

But the international environmental watchdog group Greenpeace denounced the plans.

Outside the conference building, a Greenpeace activist hung a placard saying "Here They Sell Our Future" on a statue and pasted a radiation sign on the statue's pedestal.

"Russian laws currently forbid the definitive burial of radioactive waste," Vladimir Churov from Greenpeace's Russia office told AFP, explaining that the law authorises only the temporary stocking of nuclear waste to be recycled.

"That's why the Russian atomic energy agency is appealing to the IAEA as a way of giving legitimacy to international burial zones on Russian territory under the control of the United Nations," Churov explained.

Russia is already importing some 100 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from Ukraine, Bulgaria and Hungary under Soviet-era contracts signed before legislation on nuclear waste imports was changed in 2001, Churov said.

The Russian energy ministry estimated in 2001 that the country's budget could earn up to 20 billion dollars (16 billion euros) over 10 years from the project, according to the Vedomosti business daily.

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