Russia Risks Chernobyl-Type Accident At Any Time: Greenpeace

CIVIL NUCLEAR

Moscow Protest Over Plan To Import Nuclear Waste
Moscow (AFP) Apr 25, 2002 - Police on Thursday arrested around 30 environmentalists who held an attention-grabbing protest in Moscow's Red Square against Russia's plans to import and reprocess nuclear waste for other countries. The militants, who chose the eve of the 16th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to stage the event, crawled across the cobblestoned square wearing jumpsuits marked with the words "spent nuclear waste." "We wanted to get the attention of President Vladimir Putin and the government," Alisa Nikulina of the Russian branch of the Socio-ecological Union, which organised the protest, told AFP. The body is a grouping of environmental groups from several former Soviet republics. A spokeswoman for the organsation, Viktoria Kolesnikova, said it was "immoral not to take any account of opposition to the importing of nuclear waste." Opinion polls indicate that around 60 percent of Russians are opposed to the project, approved by the government and passed into law by Putin last year. Police also detained at least three journalists and photographers who filmed the protest. "Several photographers and cameramen had their film confiscated. It was a human rights violation," Kolesnikova said. Late Thursday the Interfax news agency said that 24 of the activists were still being held at a nearby police station. The militants were likely to be brought before magistrates Friday and given administrative punishments, the agency said, quoting police. Russian officials say the country can make some 21 billion dollars (24 billion euros) over the next 10 years by reprocessing foreign nuclear waste.

Moscow (AFP) Apr 24, 2002
A nuclear catastrophe could happen in Russia "at any moment" because of poor safety at atomic installations, Greenpeace said Wednesday on the eve of the 16th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine.

"The risk of a new Chernobyl is very real," a Russian representative of the British-based environmentalist group, Maxim Shingarkin, told a press conference.

Another campaigner from Russia's Green Cross organisation, Vladimir Kuznetsov called for the closure of all RBMK reactors, of the same type as Chernobyl, which he said had suffered "more and more defects in the past three years."

Three nuclear power stations are equipped with reactors of this type, which began operating between 1974 and 1989: Smolensk (three reactors) and Kursk (four reactors) in the west of Russia and Leningrad (four reactors) in the northwest.

On April 26, 1986, the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine blew up in the world's worst civil nuclear accident, spewing out a radioactive cloud which spread over much of Europe.

Meanwhile the glitch-plagued Czech nuclear plant restarted Wednesday, after a two-month shutdown to fix the latest technical problems, a spokesman said.

The Soviet-built Temelin plant, which has triggered fierce protests notably in neighbouring Austria since it first fueled up in October 2000, was shut down on February 24 in theory for about a month.

Spokesman Milan Nebesar said the sole working reactor at the plant was started up again and would undergo tests in coming days as it is powered up to 100 percent capacity again.

Temelin is barely 60 kilometres (35 miles) from the border with Austria, which voted against nuclear power in a 1978 referendum.

Despite being upgraded with security systems by US giant Westinghouse, the plant's entry into commercial operation has been delayed by repeated technical and political problems.

Austria has demanded extra security and environmental guarantees before the plant comes fully on stream and Berlin has also attacked the plant.

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CIVIL NUCLEAR

Russia May Build Nuclear Power Plant Near, Not In, North Korea

Moscow (AFP) Apr 23, 2002
Russia may not build a nuclear power plant in North Korea, as Pyongyong had earlier suggested, but rather set up the facility near its border with the Stalinist state, according to an official with the Russian nuclear energy ministry.

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