7 Ecologists Protest after Reactor Plans Confirmed British
Broadcasting Corporation, June 09, 2000
[Presenter] The conflict in Voronezh Region between the management of
the Novovoronezh atomic power station [AES] and local
environmentalists is growing. The environmentalists are protesting
against the construction of two new reactors. All this is happening as
the AES celebrates its 20th anniversary.
[Correspondent] On the basis of the experimental 5th reactor at the
Novovoronezh AES, a whole series of similar reactors were run in and
then put into operation at other power stations in Russia and Europe.
The Voronezh station's chief engineer, Vladimir Zarubayev, used the
occasion of its 20th anniversary to confirm rumours that two more
reactors will be built there in the next few years under the plans of
the Ministry of Atomic Energy. This has led to fresh protests by
Voronezh environmentalists.
[Unidentified environmentalist] There are two reasons behind our
protest: the project will mostly be financed by importing,
reprocessing and storing foreign radioactive waste; and there are
plans to use plutonium most actively.
[Correspondent] The decision to use weapons plutonium, which is more
dangerous than uranium, has long provoked disputes between
environmentalists and atomic scientists. On this occasion, too,
Zurabayev was categorical - when describing the plans to develop the
two new reactors - in his denial that weapons-grade plutonium will be
used.
[Vladimir Zarubayev, Novovoronezh AES chief engineer] There are no
plans to use it at the Novovoronezh AES. We are talking of using the
traditional fuel, just as we do in the fifth reactor.
[Correspondent] As for the financing of the construction work by
importing into Russia radioactive waste, the management of the
Novovoronezh AES sees only commercial benefits in this activity.
[Zarubayev] We are talking here of normal technological processes.
They are all tried and tested. So I can see no harm happening to
Russia or the region because we agree to take 1,000 t or 2,000 t for
the corresponding fee.
[Correspondent] Ecological organizations are preparing various
protests. The environmentalists are determined to stop all atomic
construction projects in Voronezh Region.
(back to top)
8 Nuclear Waste Storage Project in Jeopardy Interfax News Agency, June
07, 2000
The project of utilizing the Lepse floating ship-factory for storage
of radioactive waste is in jeopardy, Russian Deputy Atomic Energy
Minister Valery Lebedev told a news conference on Wednesday.
Lepse is Europe's sole floating storage facility for radioactive waste
from the engines of Russian Northern Fleet submarines.
The project is one of the 10 implemented in the framework of
Russian-Norwegian cooperation in handling radioactive waste and used
fuel of nuclear-powered submarines being decommissioned and also in
cleaning installations in Northwestern Russia, Lebedev said.
The EU, Britain and France are also involved in the project. The
United States and the Netherlands are contributing to the construction
of an 80-tonne storage container.
The project costs are estimated at 73 million Norwegian kroner, of
which Norway will contribute 23 million.
The project is very important because the fuel contained in Lepse
poses a certain danger, Lebedev said.
The project has not taken off because numerous donor countries have
not signed agreements on their involvement in it. For this reason, the
Norwegian Foreign Ministry has refused to fund the development of the
work statement for the project.
For its part, Russia will not regard itself responsible for the
failure of the project. The Atomic Energy Ministry, Transport Ministry
and the Murmansk regional administration may reconsider transferring
Lepse to SevRAO.
(back to top)
9 Norway Worried over Nuclear Safety Situation in Kola Peninsula
Interfax News Agency, June 07, 2000
Norway is concerned about the nuclear safety situation in Russia's
Kola peninsula, said Espen Barth Eide, Norwegian Foreign Ministry
State Secretary and co- chairman of the Russian-Norwegian commission
on cooperation in handling radioactive waste and used nuclear fuel.
Norway is worried, above all, by the high concentration of nuclear
waste in Russian submarines that have not been decommissioned and by
the shortage of interim and provisional warehouses for used fuel and
hard radioactive waste, he said at a news conference in St. Petersburg
on Wednesday.
Norway is prepared to appropriate 105 million kroner during this
fiscal year for improvement of the nuclear safety situation, Eide
said. Most of that amount will be used to finance joint Russian-
Norwegian programs, he said.
Nearly 70 tonnes of used nuclear submarine fuel is now being stored in
Russia's Northwest and Pacific areas, Valery Lebedev, Russian deputy
atomic energy minister who attended the news conference, said in
response to an Interfax question.
The Atomic Energy Ministry is not planning to construct any storage
facilities in addition to the permanent ones in Chelyabinsk and
Krasnoyarsk, he said. Provisional storage facilities have been set up
in the Zvyozdochka shipyard in Severodvinsk and the Atomflot plant in
Murmansk, he said. "A third storage place is being planned," Lebedev
said.
Nuclear fuel will be removed from 18 nuclear submarines in 2000,
Lebedev said. It was removed from 12 submarines in 1998 and 1999, he
said.
The 1999 budget appropriated 680 million rubles for tackling nuclear
safety issues. A total of 1.22 billion rubles will be made available
for this purpose in 2000, he said.
(back to top)
10 Deadly Germs From Cold War The Washington Post, June 7, 2000
On the third floor of the State Research Center for Applied
Microbiology here, the sign warns: "Particularly hazardous
infections."
Behind the door is a storehouse of some of the most lethal substances
ever created, samples of germs and other pathogens developed for use
in Soviet biological weapons. In an archive of freezers and test
tubes, the third floor includes a repository for genetically
engineered versions of anthrax and plague, as well as the lesser-known
diseases tularemia and glanders.
The archive is one of the Cold War's most terrifying legacies. In the
laboratories of Building No. 1, Soviet scientists worked in extreme
secrecy for 20 years trying to build ever more deadly biological
weapons, even after Moscow signed a treaty promising not to develop or
stockpile them.
Now, slowly, Russia is opening the door to this and some other dark
corners of the once hidden Soviet bio- weapons complex. Recently, for
the first time, a sample anthrax strain was sent to the United States
for analysis, the beginning of what U.S. officials hope will be a
broader exchange.
As more is learned, the West is responding by pressing Moscow to
tighten security to help keep bio- weapons out of the wrong hands. The
United States has agreed to provide nearly $ 1 million for extra
guards, video cameras and other protection for what had been a
surprisingly lightly guarded compound.
Journalists were taken on a limited tour of Building No. 1 late last
month. Here, according to Ken Alibek, a bio-weapons expert who
defected to the United States in 1992, the Soviet Union carried out
some of the most ambitious biological weapons research ever attempted.
As with many Soviet-era scientific facilities, it has a decaying
outward appearance. Buildings are crumbling, weeds sprouting and air
locks on the fourth and fifth floors looked unused. Only the third
floor of Building No. 1 is now devoted to the most dangerous
substances, but in earlier days, five of the nine floors were used for
research on bio-weapons. From a glassed-in corridor atop the building
it is possible to view the whole sprawling complex, including a 40-bed
special isolation hospital built in case of accidental contamination.
In the Soviet era, Obolensk had 4,000 workers and was known as Post
Box V-8724, hidden in a remote, wooded area south of Moscow. Its
location was concealed, as were those of many of the most sensitive
Soviet nuclear weapons facilities. It was not on any map. Today,
scientists here carry out civilian biotechnology projects; they are
trying to fight drug-resistant tuberculosis and preparing to
manufacture high-grade insulin, which is still in short supply in
Russia.
The institute opened recently for an unprecedented three-day
international conference for about 200 microbiology experts from
Russia, the United States and Europe. The theme of the conference was
biological and ecological safety, and it was held in the same
auditorium where Soviet scientists once discussed how to create the
most devastating biological weapons ever conceived.
"Scientists today are the people who must create the system of
resistance to biological weapons and to biological terrorism,"
institute director Nikolai Urakov said in an interview. Tall, with a
head of white hair and a shoulders-back military posture, Urakov knows
whereof he speaks. According to Alibek, Urakov, who holds the rank of
general, won a Soviet prize for development of a "Q fever" weapon. Q
fever is a rare disease contracted from animals that can cause
pneumonia and other disorders in humans. Later, Urakov also oversaw a
project, code-named "Bonfire," that involved genetically engineering
new versions of such diseases as plague.
The KGB was especially interested in a new class of weapons that could
damage the human nervous system and alter moods, Alibek recalled in
his memoir, "Biohazard." "Victims would appear to have died of natural
causes," Alibek wrote. "What intelligence service would not be
interested in a product capable of killing without a trace?"
In 1979, a Soviet biological weapons accident at a top-secret military
laboratory in Yekaterinburg--called Sverdlovsk in the Soviet era--is
believed to have caused the world's most serious known outbreak of
human inhalation anthrax; the official death toll was 66.
The bio-weapons effort is not just history. Many of the pathogen
samples remain in storage, and in recent years there has been growing
apprehension in the West about the possibility they could be stolen
and used by terrorists. The laboratory here had just a single guard at
the front door and another at the gate of the fenced compound in which
it is located. It is not nearly as heavily guarded as Russian nuclear
facilities, which typically have guard patrols, dogs, surveillance
cameras and other perimeter controls.
The Cold War made controlling nuclear weapons a priority. Today, they
are limited by treaties, and millions are spent to tighten security on
nuclear materials. Likewise, the United States is helping Russia
prepare to destroy some of its aging chemical weapons stocks. But
biological weapons have been a far more elusive target for disarmament
than nuclear weapons. There is a fine line between research to create
offensive biological weapons and research to defend against them; as a
result, work on offensive weapons can be concealed under the cover of
research to develop vaccines.
Moreover, until the last few years, the Soviet biological weapons
complex was a mystery. From defectors and other sources, it was known
the weapons effort was concealed under a structure known as
Biopreparat, created in 1973 to provide civilian cover for advanced
research on biological weapons.
Biopreparat had laboratories and production facilities spread across
the Soviet Union. Samples of the deadly pathogens that were developed
are still stored in freezers and test tubes from Obolensk to
Kazakhstan. (The U.S. government said it stopped its biological
weapons program in 1969. The Soviet Union signed the Biological
Weapons Convention in 1972 but almost immediately set about violating
it.)
In 1997, representatives of the Iranian biological weapons program
made an attempt to obtain technology, pathogens and expertise from the
institute here and from another bio-weapons laboratory, Vector, in the
Novosibirsk region, which worked on viral weapons. Andrew Weber,
special adviser for threat reduction policy in the U.S. Office of the
Defense Secretary, said that the Russian labs refused the Iranian
overtures and that the United States "dramatically" increased their
funding and began cooperating with them more closely.
Meanwhile, money from the Russian government has dwindled. Urakov said
he is pleading with Moscow for about $ 3 million a year to keep the
laboratory functioning. Along with new grants just announced, the
total Western assistance to scientists, and for improved security at
Obolensk, will come to about $ 4.5 million a year.
Earlier attempts at using diplomacy to curb the possibility of
biological weapons proliferation ran into a dead end. A joint
U.S.-British-Russian effort was frustrated by disagreements over
mutual inspections; some Russian military microbiology labs are still
off-limits.
But at Obolensk, the West is making headway, sending in scientists for
cooperative research. "They are making a change--cultural, scientific
and economic--and it is a huge transformation," said Randall Beatty,
deputy executive director of the International Science and Technology
Center, a joint U.S., European and Japanese project to help Russian
weapons scientists work on civilian projects.
The project is devoting about $ 50 million this year to biotechnology
laboratories. As dozens of U.S. scientists have come to Obolensk, and
Russians to the United States, a window has opened on the true scope
of the colossal Soviet biological weapons effort.
At Obolensk, the Westerners found the largest set of anthrax and
tulameria samples in the world. Elsewhere, Western scientists have
discovered that the Soviet Union had a separate biological weapons
program--outside of Biopreparat--designed to create agents that would
kill livestock and crops on a mass scale. Little is known about it,
but one official said that the Soviet efforts were "weaponized,"
meaning that not only did they experiment with such pathogens, but
tested them and developed ways of delivering them. Research institutes
developed weapons that would, for example, spread foot and mouth
disease or African swine fever; the testing ground was in Kazakhstan,
a Soviet republic at the time.
"There is a collection of highly dangerous pathogens all over the
former Soviet Union," said one official involved, "and we are just in
the process of getting a handle on what's out there."
(back to top)
11 Krasnoyarsk Complex Ready To Implement Plutonium Programme
ITAR-TASS News Agency, June 5, 2000
"The Krasnoyarsk Mining and Chemical Complex is ready to take part in
the implementation of the programme to reprocess weapons-grade
plutonium into fuel for atomic power plants," Vasily Zhidkov,
director-general of this largest Russian nuclear centre, told
Itar-Tass on Monday.
He said that the agreement on the utilisation of weapons-grade
plutonium, which the presidents of Russia and the United States had
signed in Moscow, stipulates the reduction of its stockpiles by thirty
tonnes. Zhidkov deems correct the decision to reprocess plutonium into
mixed fuel for nuclear power plants and not to bury it in solid form.
The Krasnoyarsk complex, where "fillings" for nuclear bombs were
produced over several past decades, is now ready to take part in the
effort to turn plutonium into a peaceful atom. The enterprise has all
the necessary spaces for this, which became vacant due to the
conversion process. Production safety is guaranteed there, since those
spaces are deep underground.
Moreover, the complex has a highly skilled personnel, which was formed
in the course of several past decades. It will be able to reprocess up
to three tonnes of plutonium annually when all the facilities for
turning it into mixed fuel for nuclear plants are put into operation.
(back to top)
12 Forest Fire Specialists Express Concern BALTEX FIRE 2000 (The
Baltic Exercise for Fire Information and Resources Exchange) and the
Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC), Press Release, Kuopio, Finland,
7 June 2000
Forest fire specialists are extremely concerned about the decision of
the Russian president to abolish the Federal Forest Service of Russia.
Impacts of climate change on northern forests and the possible
consequences on forest fires in Europe and Russia are key issues that
are currently being addressed by an international forest fire
conference in Finland. Between 6 and 10 June 2000 the government of
Finland is hosting BALTEX FIRE 2000 (The Baltic Exercise for Fire
Information and Resources Exchange).
Representatives of all nations bordering the Baltic Sea, members of
the United Nations Team of Specialists on Forest Fire, which operates
under the auspices of the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), and
representatives from rescue and disaster emergency management agencies
are jointly discussing regional cooperation.
These northern nations demonstrated their understanding and
capabilities to integrate fire as a natural and ecologically
significant element in sustainable forestry. Periodic surface fires in
northern forests help to improve forest growth and reduce combustible
materials that under uncontrolled conditions would lead to severe and
catastrophic fire disasters.
The main reason for calling the international fire experts, however,
are the expected disaster fires that are currently on the increase
globally as a consequence of climate and land-use changes. Wildfires
which destroy the carbon storage of forests also contribute to
additional release of greenhouse gas emissions. The preparation of an
international action plan to respond to extreme fire disasters in any
country is therefore the most important output of the conference.
In this context the delegates of BALTEX FIRE 2000 expressed their
concern over the recent decision by the government of Russia to
abolish the State Forest Committee (Federal Forest Service) and to
replace it by a department within the Ministry for Natural Resources.
As the director of the Germany-based Global Fire Monitoring Center and
the US and Canadian representatives of the UN Fire Team stated, this
move may affect the overall capabilities of the Russian government to
control the forests belonging to the State Forest Fund and to
effectively protect these forests against fire. He urged the
government of Russia to strengthen their federal capabilities in
forest fire protection rather than weaken them by unnecessary
reorganization.
He reminded the Russian government of its responsibility, particularly
under recently agreed-to international commitments concerning climate
change, greenhouse gas emission limitations, and the global carbon
budget, to professionally manage and protect the 1.1 billion hectares
of forest which constitute an important natural asset with significant
importance to global environmental and climate stability.
(back to top)
13 Russian Caviar Threatened by Caspian Oil Find Sunday Telegraph
(London), June 11, 2000
RUSSIAN caviar supplies, already sharply reduced by poaching, are
under threat of eradication by plans to develop large oilfields in the
Caspian Sea.
Scientists say sturgeon stocks face extinction after the recent
discovery by LUKoil, the main Russian oil company, of 2.2 billion
barrels of hydrocarbons at Severny in the northern Caspian - the first
big oil strike in the sea's Russian sector.
"Sturgeon could disappear from the Caspian within 15 years if oil
drilling is allowed," said Anatoly Vlasenko, the deputy head of the
Caspian Fishing Institute in Astrakhan. "It will have a catastrophic
effect on the environment."
In an ominous sign of what may follow, thousands of dead seals have
been washed ashore in the past two months, killed by a mysterious
ailment that many attribute to pollution from oil drilling. Aerial
photographs on Russian television showed floating islands of corpses.
About 20,000 seals have died since the first bodies appeared in April,
according to Akhmed Mungiyev, the director of the Centre of State
Ecological Control in Makhachkala, a Russian port on the Caspian.
"LUKoil is planning to extract oil from the sturgeons' traditional
feeding grounds in the north Caspian," said Mr Vlasenko. "The fish
feed on the bottom of the sea, which is exactly where all the toxic
waste from drilling ends up."
The Caspian is already filthy. A study showed that the sea - the
world's biggest inland body of water - has unacceptably high levels of
heavy metals.
Only half the sturgeon examined in the study were found to be entirely
healthy. The region's sturgeon stocks provide 90 per cent of the
world's black caviar.
LUKoil insists its Severny operation will be ecologically sound as
waste will be collected on the drilling platform and transported in
special containers to onshore reprocessing facilities. However,
scientists believe that Russia's poor environmental record means that
the sturgeons' feeding grounds will be destroyed.
Quintessentially Russian, the small jars of salted sturgeon roe have
long been coveted by epicureans. However, poaching has left the
Russian caviar industry in crisis. Russia caught only 630 tons of
sturgeon in the Caspian last year, compared with 15,000 tons in 1985.
The scale of the crisis is clear in the Volga Delta, home to the once
great sturgeon fisheries. In the village of Trudfront, a group of old
fishermen sat by the riverbank, next to the rusting hull of a boat and
a pile of frayed and rotting nets. The fishing season is over - two
weeks ahead of schedule.
In the 26 years he has worked on the Volga, Sharim Jaralgasev has
never seen anything like it. "There are no fish," he said. "It is the
end of caviar, the end of sturgeon. The government cares much more
about oil and gas than it does about fish. All the fish and seals are
dying already and so far they've just been building exploratory
wells."
Specialists say caviar could become as rare as it was in medieval
times, when only kings and popes were allowed to eat "the royal fish".
Between 1993 and 1998, exports to Japan, Europe and the United States
fell by a third to 257 tons. Caviar House, an importer based in
Geneva, says prices have risen by 70 per cent over the past two years
and it now buys most of its caviar from Iran, the other main producer.
At Harrods, a pound of Beluga caviar costs pounds 1,000.
Scientists estimate that there were 110 million sturgeon in the
Caspian in 1983, but the figure fell to 45 million last year. "We
should extract oil and gas on land and leave the Caspian for the
fish," said Mr Vlasenko. "The Caspian has always fed Russia and will
continue to do so, but only if it's left alone."
(back to top)
14 Hundreds of Seals Die Off Dagestani Caspian Sea Coast Interfax News
Agency, June 08, 2000
Hundreds of dead bodies of seals are being washed ashore on the
Dagestani coast of the Caspian Sea daily, director of the Dagestani
Environment Monitoring Center Akhmed Mungiyev told Interfax on
Thursday.
Seals started dying en masse in April, when hundreds of their dead
bodies were found daily on Kazakhstan's shore. Over 8,000 had died in
the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea by early June.
The seals are poisoned by mercury and cadmium whose content in the
Caspian waters is much higher than the maximum admissible
concentration, researchers in the Astrakhan-based Fishery Institute
have said. The cadmium content in areas where masses of seals died was
17 times the maximum admissible concentration.
This environmental disaster is man-made, the researchers say. The
poisoning undermined the seals' immunity systems and reduced the birth
rate because numerous females miscarry.
The population of Caspian seals has fallen by 20% in 10 years and
totals about 420,000, the Kazakh Ministry of Natural Resources and
Environment Protection reports.
(back to top)
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