About the trip: Center for
Safe Energy, a project of Earth Island
Institute, sponsored 3 weeks of People's
Hearings on MOX plutonium fuel in Russia. A
delegation of US activists and experts went to
Russia as participants in this education effort.
Delegates included Lou and Janet Zeller of Blue Ridge
Environmental Defense League, Pat Ortmeyer of
Women's Action for
New Directions, Don Moniak, Tom Clements of Nuclear Control
Institute, Arjun Makhijani and Michele
Boyd of Institute
for Energy and Environmental Research, and
Fran Macy and Enid Schreibman of Center for
Safe Energy.
Tour
Journal
Subject: First message
from Russia
To: Family and friends
From: Lou & Janet
Date: Wednesday, May 24, 2000
We arrived safe in Moscow on Monday. We want to
let you all know that we are being taken very
good care of by our Russian hosts. It will take
another day or so for us to email you directly,
so we are having this message relayed to you via
our friends in Saratov. It might take a few more
days before you can email us directly.
We arrived last night in Saratov which is a
pleasant, medium sized city (one million people)
on the Volga River in the heartland of European
Russia. We are writing this while on the bus
(bump!) crossing the longest bridge in Europe.
The bridge crosses the Volga River and is three
kilometers long. It is a beautiful, sunny day
here.
Today we are having meetings with citizen
activists, local government officials, and
nuclear industry representatives. Tomorrow we
will speak at the first public hearing on mixed
oxide/plutonium fuel in Balakovo. The Balakovo
nuclear plant is slated for plutonium
fuel/MOX. There are four reactors at Balakovo and
Balakovo 4 is designated to take the Lead Test
Assemblies for MOX fuel.
From: Lou Zeller
Re: Balakovo Nuclear power Plant
Date: 25 May 2000
Yesterday Pat Ortmeyer, Fran Macy, Tom Clements,
Don and Karen Moniak, Janet and I took a
tour of the Balakovo NPP which is designated in
Russian and American documents as the reactor for
plutonium fuel/MOX. We were taken on a
walking tour through the reactor steam generator
building and the reactor control room inside
reactor 3. There are four operating nuclear
reactors at Balakovo, between 15 and 7 years
old. Two more are planned. (We learned from
Lydia Popova that the government announced plans
for a total of 40 more new atomic power plants in
Russia. Needless to say, she was very upset by
this recent news.)
The Balakovo NPP officials seemed happy to take
us on the tour but they provided minimal answers
to questions. Plant officials said that no
modifications of the plant would be necessary for
MOX fuel and that the first Lead Test Assembly
would be loaded in 2004. However, without money
from the USA this project will not go forward.
Please find attached to this email photos of the
plant taken from the front gate of the reactor.
Today we attended the public hearing
organized by Olga Pitsunova and activists
from Saratov and Balakova. The
event was well attended and state nuclear
officials, local health agency managers,
and anti-nuclear activists all had a
chance to hear what each group thought
about plutonium fuel. (see photo of
Olga P. also attached)
The proceedings were initiated by a
troupe of young people organized by
Anatoly and Olga Sivachenko. The
troupe is called "In Spite of
Everything." It was a parody of
public television pablum about nuclear
power and plutonium fuel. (see
photo in 3rd attachment)
The day ended after 8 solid hours of
testimony, mostly anti-MOX. An
anti-MOX fuel policy document was
developed and approved at the
meeting. We hope to get an English
translation as soon as possible.
Email is catch-as-catch-can. More soon, I
hope!
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full view
full view
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From: Janet &
Lou Zeller
Place: Ekaterinburg,
Sverdlovsk, Russia
Date: May 31,
2000
Re: Visit to
Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Plant
Today the American
Delegation on Plutonium Fuel visited the
Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Plant which is 25
kilometers from the City of Ekaterinburg (pop.
1.3 million). There is also a
town just 3 kilometers from the plant.
People used to live closer to the plant, but a
zone of contamination had to be created and
people had to be evacuated.
Radioactive contamination has spread 180
kilometers downstream from the plant and
includes strontium 90 and cesium 137.
Reactors 1 and 2 were shut down after radiation
releases resulting from problems with irradiated
fuel storage. These hot fuels are still
stored on site and no decommissioning plan
exists.
Reactor number
3 is a BN-600 fast breeder type with an
electric output of 600 MW electricity, 1470
MW thermal. The plant officials said that
the heat output is not used and is dumped into
the cooling pond. This reactor has had
several serious sodium (coolant) leaks, the most
serious of which occurred in 1996. Plant
officials denied the occurance of any serious
coolant leakage. The BN-600 is slated for
plutonium fuel use--one third core in 2004 and
full-core a few years later. (In 1988 the
plant secretly began using some plutonium fuel
assemblies.)
Lou asked about a
weakness identified by US Department of Energy
regarding fresh plutonium fuel handling.
The DOE reported that the actinides (e.g.
Americium-241) in the fresh plutonium/MOX fuel
would require remote handling systems. The
plant engineers we spoke to today
denied there were any special preparations
of this nature underway or needed. They
also said there would be no need for
retrofit of the reactor for plutonium/MOX
fuel.
Janet asked if
any representatives of American corporations had
visited the plant and she was shown the card
of a Duke Power employee who works at the Catawba
nuclear plant near Rock Hill, SC.
A fourth reactor at
Beloyarsk has received its license but is not
constructed because of financial problems.
This BN-800 would be larger but would have only
one steam turbine, as opposed to three in Unit 3
BN-600. The use of plutonium fuel planned
for this reactor is obviously not designed for
electricity output!
As at the Balakovo
reactor, the Beloyarsk plant was guarded by armed
soldiers. A major concern about the mixing
of military weapons plutonium and the commercial
nuclear industry is the need for high level
security. Because the plutonium fuel
traveling from the planned fuel fabrication plant
at Savannah River to the McGuire and Catawba
reactors would require military-like
escorts. The McGuire and Catawba plants may
have to have armed guards authorized to use
deadly force.
Subject: Ekaterinburg
Public Hearing June 2, 2000
From: Lou Zeller
Place: Ekaterinburg
Date: Friday, June 2
We are east of the
Urals Mountains and at a very northern
latitude. The sky is bright at 11 PM.
Today the American
Delegation attended the Public Hearing at Dom
Tekniki (House of Technology) in
Ekaterinburg. The hearings was organized by
Leonid Piskunov, a retired physicist who is very
active in the movement to stop plutonium fuel in
his home town, and Anatol Lebedev, President of
the Urals Environmental Union which is
a regional organization of scientists and
lawyers.
The proceedings began
with a speech by Janet Zeller on environmental
justice, environmental democracy, and community
control. She said, "We oppose
plutonium fuel in nuclear power reactors because
it is expensive and endangers public
health. And the state program to use this
fuel violates democratic rights."
Lydia Popova, a
former Minatom nuclear physicist who now leads
the Socioecological Union which opposes plutonium
fuel, spoke about this magnificent Ural Mountain
region and of her sadness that the
Chelyabinsk accident contaminated this land of
Russian fairy tales with poisonous tritium,
cesium, and other radionuclides. She said,
"This is a Cold War technology which was
invented for the production of military
plutonium. Now Minatom proposes to use its
failed reactors for plutonium fuel. But the
politicians never consulted the
people. Do we really need to use this Cold
War legacy. It is a dead end!"
Other speakers gave
talks with detailed information about the 1957
explosion at Chelyabinsk and the
radioactivity which still contaminates the
Techa River and the lands around it.
Families which suffer from birth defects caused
by the damage have still not been compensated.
Leonid Piskunov rose
to tell of the 1987 accident at Beloyarsk Nuclear
Power Plant. The accident reached the
fourth level of seriousness, the
fallout was 1 Curie per square kilometer, and
release of radioactivity continues. In 1988
the plant secretly began using plutonium
fuel. He spoke about the lack of
containment at the BN-600 reactors and said,
"Nuclear facilities do not comply with
regulations."
Following the
hearing, the participants took action and
supported in principle a comprehensive position
which includes a public environmental impact
statement, a formal licensing process
for plutonium fuel use, and the
establishment of a research center for radiation
dose impacts.
Attachment--Photo of
the hearing with Janet Zeller addressing the
assembly. Leonid Piskunov, who chaired the
meeting, is seated next to the
speaker's podium. On the far right is
Fran Macy, of the Berkeley-based Center for Safe
Energy, who heads the American Delegation.
This
one-minute interview with Oleg Bodrov was
conducted by Lou Zeller at the Ministry
for Atomic Energy of the Russian
Federation (Minatom) Hotel in St.
Petersburg on June 10, 2000.
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BREDL video clip.
Interview with Oleg Bodrov. Play
video clip.
(may take a few
minutes to download)
(
.mpg format - plays on Windows
Media Player ) |
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Oleg Bodrov is Chairman of the environmental
organization Green World and Editor of the
Ecological Bulletin in St.Petersburg,
Russia. Oleg's home is near the Gulf
of Finland in a village called Sosnovy Bor, which
means "pine forest." Fifty miles
west of St. Petersburg, Sosnovy Bor is
also the location of Leningrad Nuclear Power
Plant with four 1000 megawatt nuclear power
reactors. The four RBMK-1000 reactors are
similar in design to Chernobyl.
Greenworld leads a public education campaign on
the danger of radioactive waste fuel storage at
the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant. The highly
radioactive waste is at 130% of design storage
capacity and contains 40 to 60 times the
radiation released in the Chernobyl disaster.
Oleg graduated from Leningrad Polytechnic
University with a degree in nuclear engineering
and physics and formerly worked on Soviet nuclear
submarines at the Research Institute of Nuclear
Technology. For most of the last decade he
has participated in numerous international
conferences on nuclear safety, disarmament, and
environmental problems. Oleg was part of the
Russian Delegation opposed to plutonium fuel
which came to Charlotte, NC in 1999. He
hosted the American Delegation during our tour of
the Minatom Regional Education Center in St.
Petersburg,
Russia.
Greenworld
PO Box 68/7, 188537 Sosnovy Bor
St. Petersburg region, Russia
website: http://spb.org.ru/greenworld
email address: greenwld@spb.org.ru
More info: State Scientific Centre of The Russian
Federation Institute for Physics & Power
Engineering
(map and basic info regarding Russia's Nuclear
Power Plants)
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