Antinuclear

Russia’s anti nuclear movement battling to close aging reactors, and stop new ones

On Murmansk Oblast’s Kola peninsula, however, nuclear backers face one of the strongest environmental organizations in Russia. For more than 10 years, Vitaly Servetnik and other activists at Priroda i molodezh (Nature and Youth) have battled attempts to build new reactors and extend the life of existing ones at the Kola nuclear plant, carrying out more than 100 protest campaigns

Servetnik accuses the authorities of using the Interior Ministry’s anti-terror police, known as Center E, to spy on his small group based in Murmansk.

ecologists persuaded authorities in Volgodonsk, southern Russia, to hold round table talks on the planned power increase of one reactor at the Rostov nuclear plant. In the Kaliningrad exclave, opposition is mounting to the planned 2016 launch of a new reactor at the Baltic plant. 

Nuclear-Strength Kola TOL Special Report: In Russia’s northwest, a scrappy bunch of young environmentalists faces off against a powerfulnuclear lobby. By Alexander Tretyakov  reporter for SOTV, a publicly funded Internet television channel in Moscow.24 May 2012  . MOSCOW | Murmansk Oblast in northern Russia has one of the highest concentrations of nuclear energy on earth. Nuclear submarines and icebreakers of the Russian Northern Fleet sail the White and Barents seas, and the Kola nuclear power plant is still going strong nearly 40 years after its first reactor hummed into life.

Russia’s nuclear industry is due for a massive expansion under a government plan to increase nuclear’s share in national power
production. Russia has shown no sign of wavering on nuclear power in the wake of last year’s Fukushima disaster,

On Murmansk Oblast’s Kola peninsula, however, nuclear backers face one of the strongest environmental organizations in Russia. For more than 10 years, Vitaly Servetnik and other activists at Priroda i molodezh (Nature and Youth) have battled attempts to build new reactors and extend the life of existing ones at the Kola nuclear plant, carrying out more than 100 protest campaigns, with more success than some of their fellow campaigners elsewhere in Russia. Campaigners took heart when several years ago local government seemed to be warming to their enthusiasm for wind power and other forms of renewable energy.

 “The Kola nuclear plant is in a critical state,” said Andrei Ozharovsky, a nuclear physicist and expert with the Bellona Foundation. The Norwegian-based environmental group has long been critical of Russia’s heavy reliance on nuclear power in the far north. “Although the plant has some of the oldest reactors, there are plans to increase the output of Unit 4 by 7 percent.”

 The two oldest reactors at Kola have been in operation since the 1970s. Unit 4 went online in 1984. All four units are pressurized-water reactors, similar to those used in many countries, but Russia is the only country that still uses graphite-moderated RBMK reactors such as the one that exploded at Chernobyl. Eleven RBMK units are still in operation at the Kursk, Leningrad, and Smolensk power plants. Anti-nuclear campaigners can boast of one victory in the post-Fukushima era: Russia’s state nuclear energy conglomerate Rosatom said in March it was stopping work on a fifth RBMK reactor at the Kursk plant which had been under construction since 1985, a year before the Chernobyl disaster.

Servetnik accuses the authorities of using the Interior Ministry’s anti-terror police, known as Center E, to spy on his small group based in Murmansk.

 “The most active members of our organization are under surveillance by Center E,” he said in a recent interview.

 “The pressure increased after 4 March,” he said, in a reference to the day Vladimir Putin was elected to a third term as president. “This may be connected with the participation of members of the group, as well as my own, in activities of the regional Golos [election monitoring group].”

Despite the pressure, over the years activists from Nature and Youth and the allied Kola Environmental Center have thrown a number of wrenches into the plans of the nuclear lobby. In 2006, Servetnik and colleagues from Nature and Youth challenged Rosatom’s bid to expand the nuclear plant, partly to service a power-hungry aluminum smelter. They managed to persuade Rosatom head Sergei Kirienko to meet with them. It turned out to be the last time Kirienko met members of the group, but the expansion plan was shelved. 

 The Murmansk region may be unusual only in that anti-nuclear campaigners have had marginally more success here. With hardly a blip after last year’s nuclear disaster in Japan, Russia is pressing ahead with plans to extend the lives of old reactors and build new ones. Just weeks after the earthquake and tsunami struck Fukushima, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin set a goal of increasing nuclear’s share of national electricity generation from 16 percent to 25 percent. Such a step would have been hard to imagine when Putin came to power in the late 1990s. Nuclear energy had gone into a deep slump as the combined blows of Chernobyl and the collapsing economy put most expansion plans on hold. Since 2000 the state-controlled industry has been on the rebound, but even so, 23 of the country’s 33 active reactors predate Chernobyl.   ……….

Fortunately for local environmentalists, Scandinavia with its comparatively powerful anti-nuclear groups lies just across the border. Opposition to expansion of the Kola plant has been spearheaded by Nature and Youth’s parent group and by Bellona, both based in Norway. Anti-nuclear groups elsewhere in Russia are more isolated and their protests are generally more muted. Nevertheless, ecologists persuaded authorities in Volgodonsk, southern Russia, to hold round table talks on the planned power increase of one reactor at the Rostov nuclear plant. In the Kaliningrad exclave, opposition is mounting to the planned 2016 launch of a new reactor at the Baltic plant.      http://www.tol.org/client/article/23174-nuclear-strength-kola.html

May 25, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized