By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — After pledging US$22.6 billion to save Russia from economic meltdown, international lenders are being called upon to extend a further US$18 billion. Not, this time, to avoid metaphorical meltdowns, but to help set the scene for real ones.
At a press conference on August 3, leading Russian nuclear energy official Yevgeny Ignatenko outlined plans for the building of 16 new nuclear power reactors by the year 2010. Ignatenko is the director of the state body Rosenergoatom, which operates Russia's nuclear power plants.
With nine power reactors to be decommissioned during the period to 2010, Ignatenko explained, the number operating in Russia would rise from 29 to 36. Eight new nuclear power plants would come into operation, and the proportion of Russia's electricity derived from nuclear power would rise from 12.8% to about 14.7%.
The total cost of the expansion program would come to 114 billion roubles (about US$18 billion). Because the nearly bankrupt government is skimping on infrastructure development, nuclear authorities are looking to private investors — above all, foreign ones — to provide this sum.
But international financiers are not leaping at the chance to fund new Chernobyls. Russia's nuclear power industry, aside from posing well-known environmental dangers, suffers from a drawback guaranteed to put off most potential lenders. As payment for their product, nuclear plants have mostly to settle for bartered goods. The industry sees little in the way of "living money", and is ill placed to repay loans.
There is also real doubt that the electricity from new plants would find buyers. The contraction of industrial output during the 1990s has created an excess of generating capacity, and the country's industries show few signs of reviving.
With an uneconomic product, the nuclear power authorities can be expected to turn their attention back to state sources of financing. The nuclear industry has excellent contacts in the armed forces and in technocratic circles within the state bureaucracy, and has long shown an ability to extract favours from the government.
During July, the government endorsed its own variant of Ignatenko's expansion program. The English-language Moscow Times stated on July 30 that Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko had signed a document calling for the completing of four nuclear reactors now under construction, and for the building of four more nuclear plants by 2010.
In addition, planning work is to begin on yet another four plants. The federal authorities will not pay for the construction work involved in these projects, but will finance research and development.
More dangerous option
If these schemes fail to prosper, the nuclear bosses have several fall-back options that, at least on the surface, appear much cheaper. These latter variants, however, are not necessarily less dangerous than the full swag of 16 new "nukes".
Of Russia's 29 working nuclear power reactors, 13 were built in the 1970s, with a planned lifespan of 30 years. In the normal order of things, they would be decommissioned during the coming decade. Now, nuclear officials are talking of keeping them in operation.
On July 30 the Moscow Times quoted Nikolai Yermakov, head of the nuclear power department in the government's Nuclear Energy Ministry, as saying that the lifespan of many of the reactors could be increased by "at least five to ten years".
The safety implications of keeping leaky, metal-fatigued equipment functioning beyond its designed period of service need no comment.
Perhaps even more risk-laden is a scheme to develop the use of mixed uranium-plutonium reactor fuel. Here, the push by the nuclear power industry to shore up its influence and ensure its survival is being disguised as arms reduction.
Russia reportedly has reserves of weapons-grade plutonium of some 50 tonnes. According to Reuters on July 27, Russia is seeking up to US$2 billion in aid from the international community for developing ways to "dispose of" this plutonium by using it in nuclear power reactors.
On July 24, the report stated, Kiriyenko signed an agreement with US Vice-President Albert Gore "under which both nations pledged to convert plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons".
The report quoted US undersecretary of energy Ernest Moniz as saying that the US, France and Germany had held preliminary talks on helping Russia to build the first plants for converting plutonium. If such plants are constructed, and if Russia finishes up holding large quantities of uranium-plutonium fuel, this situation will be cited as a compelling reason to build or convert reactors to use the fuel.
This method of "disposing of" plutonium poses far greater dangers than alternatives such as vitrification and burial in stable geological structures. When plutonium — arguably the most dangerous substance on earth — is transported or processed, the possibility of leaks or theft can never be ruled out.
Protests
Discussing the proposals urged by the pro-nuclear lobby, Greenpeace Russia spokesperson Igor Forofontov stresses that these schemes are economically absurd as well as environmentally perilous.
"Our industries already use far more energy per unit of output than in the west", Forofontov points out. "The resources that are projected for nuclear power should go into energy-saving technologies.
"If even half of the oil and gas that leaks into the Russian environment or is flared off were used for power generation, there'd be no need for nuclear energy."
Meanwhile, anti-nuclear activists have been taking their protests to the reactors — specifically, to the nuclear power plant on the Kola Peninsula in Russia's far north-west.
The Kola plant is one of Russia's oldest nuclear installations, and according to an International Atomic Energy Agency study some years ago, is among the most dangerous.
The decommissioning of its reactors is due to begin in about five years. Although the Kola Peninsula has a rich potential for hydro and wind power generation, the government plans to replace the existing nuclear plant with a new one, to use mixed uranium-plutonium fuel.
Between July 19 and August 3, around 150 anti-nuclear activists from at least seven countries mounted a protest camp three and a half kilometres from the Kola plant. The activists were demanding the shutting down of the plant, the scrapping of the plans to replace it and the developing and implementing of a regional plan for the use of renewable energy resources.
On July 28, about 50 of the protesters helped stage an "anti-nuclear day" in Apatity, the peninsula's second largest city. Teams of activists also distributed leaflets in other population centres, including the nuclear workers' town of Polyarnye Zory.
Although many local people voiced support for the protesters, relations with the authorities were tense.
Foreign participants in the camp were fined for breaching the terms of their visas. Non-violent direct action by protesters in Polyarnye Zory on July 29 was met by officials with threats and physical attacks. A newspaper in Apatity published an article under the headline "Terrorists beneath the walls of the Kola Nuclear Power Plant".
Throughout the period of the camp, the nuclear plant was kept under heavy security force protection. But using a diversionary tactic, environmentalists on July 29 managed to climb onto the roof of the plant's administration building, and to unfurl a 50-metre banner that read "Nuclear Plant is Silent Death." Three of the protesters were arrested.