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Problems with Russia’s hype about “super weapons”- and risk of escalating war

August 7, 2020 Posted by | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russia plans removal of its nuclear trash from Arctic waters

Russia to Remove Hazardous Nuclear Objects Dumped in Its Arctic Waters, 

The country’s nuclear energy company will over the next eight years lift two submarines and four reactor compartments from the bottom of the Barents and Kara Seas.  By The Barents Observer  5 Aug 20,   Russia’s state nuclear agency plans to remove several nuclear objects from the depths of Russia’s Arctic waters in an effort to reduce environmental hazards, Rosatom said this week as it presented a clean-up plan for the region.

Russia’s state nuclear agency plans to remove several nuclear objects from the depths of Russia’s Arctic waters in an effort to reduce environmental hazards, Rosatom said this week as it presented a clean-up plan for the region.

From the late 1960s to the late 1980s, about 18,000 radioactive objects were dumped into Russia’s remote northern waters. Most of them present little environmental risk. But some are increasingly seen as a hazard to Arctic ecosystems.

“Rosatom over the next eight years intends to lift from the bottom of Russia’s Arctic waters six objects that are most dangerous in terms of radioactive pollution,” the company’s spokesperson told the state-run TASS news agency.

The company plans to lift the reactors from the K-11, K-19 and K-140 submarines as well as spent nuclear fuel from the reactor that served the Lenin icebreaker.

In addition, two entire submarines will be lifted: the K-27 from the Kara Sea and K-159 from the Barents Sea. While the former was deliberately dumped by Soviet authorities in 1982, the latter sank during a towing operation in 2003.

The K-27 is located in 33-meter depths east of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. It has been described by experts as a potential radioactive “time bomb.” The K-159 is located in 200-meter depths off the coast of the Kola Peninsula.

These six objects represent more than 90% of radioactive sources dumped at sea, Rosatom said………

Lifting the six hazardous nuclear objects will not only be technically difficult, but also very expensive.

A recent report made for Rosatom and the European Commission estimated the costs of lifting these six objects at 278 million euros. That includes the cost of bringing them safely to a yard for decommissioning and long-term storage.

Lifting the K-159 alone is estimated to cost 57.5 million euros. Lifting the K-27 and transporting it to a shipyard for decommissioning and long-term storage in Saida Bay will carry a price tag of 47.7 million euros, the report said.

It’s unlikely that Russia’s increasingly cash-strapped treasury will have the 278 million euros needed for the cleanup.

Several countries have previously allocated billions to assist Russia’s post-Soviet efforts to cope with nuclear waste.

Norway has since the mid-90s granted about 1.5 billion kroner (140 million euros) to nuclear safety projects in the Russian part of the Barents region.  https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/08/05/russia-to-remove-hazardous-nuclear-objects-dumped-in-its-arctic-waters-a71060

August 6, 2020 Posted by | ARCTIC, oceans, Russia, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

For the nuclear industry, coronavirus is helpful, as nuclear wastes go quietly from Germany to Russia

FoE Europe 25th June 2020, Russia and Germany have taken advantage of the coronavirus crisis to resume
shipping radioactive waste to dump in the Urals and Siberia in northern
Russia.
When Russian environmental groups discovered, in autumn 2019, that
Germany was exporting radioactive waste from it’s nuclear power stations to
Russia, via the harbor of Amsterdam, they directly organized protests in
the three countries.
Those protests had success, and the transport by rail
and sea of uranium – a waste product of nuclear fuel production by Urenco
Germany – was put on hold. That was before the coronavirus crisis hit.
But
in March 2020, when Covid-19 lockdowns restricted people’s right to protest
in Russia even further, the shipments of radioactive waste were set to
resume.

http://www.foeeurope.org/covidsolidarity-russia

August 3, 2020 Posted by | Russia, safety | Leave a comment

US-Russia launch talks in Vienna on nuclear arms control

US-Russia launch talks in Vienna on nuclear arms control,   https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/russia-launch-talks-vienna-nuclear-arms-control-200728100744019.html  29 Jul 20, 

The talks come less than a year before the expiration of New START, the last remaining nuclear arms control deal.  The United States and Russia have entered a new phase of talks on nuclear arms control in Vienna, with working groups comprising government experts from both sides starting to meet for the first time.Over the course of three days, starting Tuesday, the groups of experts will deal with military doctrines and potentials, transparency and verification, as well as with security in space, according to the Russian foreign ministry.

The new format was set up in June in negotiations between US arms-control envoy Marshall Billingslea and Russia Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in the Austrian capital.

The talks are taking place less than a year before the expiration of the New START agreement, the last remaining nuclear arms-control deal between the countries, which together possess about 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

The US-Russia Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which had banned nuclear-capable, land-launched missiles with a range between 500km (310 miles) and 5,500km (3,417 miles), ended last year, after the US initiated a pull-out, accusing Moscow of cheating.

Washington also wants China to take part in the arms control negotiations, but Beijing has made it clear that it is not interested.

July 30, 2020 Posted by | politics international, Russia, USA | Leave a comment

Russian navy to get hypersonic nuclear weapons: Putin

Russian navy to get hypersonic nuclear weapons: Putin, Aljazeera, 26 July 20, The combination of speed and altitude of hypersonic missiles makes them difficult to track and intercept.   Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the Russian navy will be armed with hypersonic nuclear weapons and underwater nuclear drones.

The weapons, some of which have yet to be deployed, include the Poseidon underwater nuclear drone, designed to be carried by submarines, and the Tsirkon (Zircon) hypersonic cruise missile, which can be deployed on surface ships.

The combination of speed, manoeuvrability, and altitude of hypersonic missiles, capable of travelling at more than five times the speed of sound, makes them difficult to track and intercept.

Putin, who said he does not want an arms race, has   ften spoken of a new generation of Russian nuclear weapons he says are unequalled and can hit almost anywhere in the world. Some Western experts have questioned how advanced they are……..https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/russian-navy-hypersonic-nuclear-weapons-putin-200726160351237.htm

July 27, 2020 Posted by | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Additional resources requested for Siberian forest fire; state of emergency

Additional resources requested for Siberian forest fire,   https://www.sbs.com.au/news/additional-resources-requested-for-siberian-forest-fire    17 Jul 20,  A state of emergency has been declared in the Khanti-Mansi Autonomous District as 25 fires continue to burn across 12,000 hectares.

July 18, 2020 Posted by | climate change, Russia | Leave a comment

Siberia’s heat-wave – global heating is what made this possible

Siberia heatwave was ‘almost impossible’ without climate change, scientists say, SBS News 16 Jul 20, An extreme heatwave in the Arctic is a problem for the entire planet, say scientists, because the region regulates weather around the globe and contains much of the world’s carbon-rich permafrost.A recent heatwave in Siberia that saw temperature records tumble as the region sweltered in 38-Celsius highs was “almost impossible” without the influence of man-made climate change, leading climate scientists say.

An international team of researchers found that the record-breaking warm period was more than 2 degrees hotter than it would have been if humans had not warmed the planet through decades of greenhouse gas emissions.

The five hottest years in history have occurred in the last five years and there’s a better-than-even chance that 2020 will be the hottest ever recorded.

Earth’s poles are warming faster than the rest of the planet, and temperatures in Siberia – home to much of the world’s carbon-rich permafrost – were more than 5 degrees hotter than average between January and June. ………

‘Important for everyone’

The team behind the calculations stressed that the Siberian heatwave was a problem for the entire globe. Some 1.15 million hectares of forest going up in flames released millions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.

At the same time, the wildfires and sustained heatwaves accelerated the region’s permafrost melt. This caused an oil tank built on frozen soil to collapse in May, leading to one of the region’s worst-ever oil spills…….

The 2015 Paris climate deal commits nations to capping temperature rises to “well-below” 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels and to strive for a 1.5 degrees limit if at all possible. With just 1 degree of warming so far, Earth is already buffeted by record-breaking droughts, wild fires and super storms made more potent by rising sea levels.

To keep in line with the 1.5-degree target, the United Nations says global emissions must fall by 7.6 per cent every year this decade.

Sonia Seneviratne, from ETH Zurich’s Department of Environmental Systems Science, said the research showed the heatwave was an example of “extreme events which would have almost no chance of happening” without man-made emissions. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/siberia-heatwave-was-almost-impossible-without-climate-change-scientists-say

July 16, 2020 Posted by | climate change, Russia | Leave a comment

The new normal for Northern Siberia – thawing permafrost,forests on fire

The Moscow Times reports economic losses from thawing permafrost alone is expected to cost Russia’s economy up to $2.3 billion US per year. Last year’s fires likely cost rural communities in the region almost $250 million US.   In March, Russia announced 29 measures it would be taking to try to deal with climate change over its vast landmass but critics complained the efforts have been more focused on exploiting natural resources in the Arctic than mitigating the impacts of a warming climate.

“They are actively going after every mineral and oil and gas deposit that they can,”

As permafrost thaws under intense heat, Russia’s Siberia burns — again,   https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/siberia-burning-climate-change-russia-1.5645428

Russia’s northern landscape is being transformed by heat and fire, Chris Brown · CBC News : Jul 12, Right around now, University of British Columbia climatologist and tundra researcher Greg Henry would usually be up at Alexandra Fiord on the central-east coast of Canada’s Ellesmere Island experiencing the Arctic’s warming climate up close.

Instead, the pandemic has kept his research team grounded in Vancouver — and his focus has shifted to observing the dramatic events unfolding across the Arctic ocean in northern Siberia.

“It’s remarkable — it’s scary,” said Henry of the incredible run of high temperatures in Russia’s far north that have been breaking records for the past month.

This week, a European Union climate monitoring project reported temperatures in June were up to 10 degrees higher than usual in some parts of Russia’s Arctic, with an overall rise of five degrees.

The heat and dry tundra conditions have also triggered vast forest fires. Currently, 1.77 million hectares of land are burning with expectations that the total fire area could eventually surpass the 17 million hectares that burned in 2019.

Equally striking is where the fires are burning.

“Now we are seeing these fires within 15 kilometres of the Arctic Ocean,” said Henry. “Usually there’s not much fuel to burn there, because it’s kept cold by the ocean so you don’t get ignition of fires that far north.”

This year though, he said the heat has dried the ground out enough to change the dynamics.

“It’s a harbinger of what we are in for because the Arctic has been warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet.”

Environmental disaster Continue reading →

July 13, 2020 Posted by | ARCTIC, climate change, Russia | Leave a comment

Evacuation of a tiny Russian village, – in preparation for a nuclear missile test?

Russian Village in ‘Danger Zone’ of Possible Nuclear Missile Test, Nenoksa is once again the crosshairs after a radioactive accident last year. AT TOP  https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a33219749/nenoksa-nuclear-missile/   BY KYLE MIZOKAMIJUL 6, 2020    

  • The tiny Russian village of Nenoksa will face voluntary evacuations due to an “unspecified test.”
  • The test could well be of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile.
  • A nearby incident in 2019 involving Burevestnik killed five and triggered radiation warnings throughout the region.
A tiny village in northern Russia is back in the global spotlight again after its residents were warned they were in the “danger zone” for an upcoming military activity. The Russian government is offering to temporarily evacuate the 500 or so residents of the village of Nenoksa for the duration of the activity. The village became famous in 2019 after an incident involving a nuclear-powered cruise missile.
Nenoksa lies just south of the Arctic Circle, in Arkangelsk Oblast, Russia. According to the Barents Observer, the nearby city of Severodvinsk posted a warning on its website that Nenoksa is “inside the danger zone during work by the 1st scientific center of military unit 09703.” The advisory runs from 6 a.m. July 7 to 6 p.m. July 8th.

The Russian government is providing five buses for those that wish to evacuate, and evacuation is voluntary. Considering the village has a population of 500, it obviously expects not everyone to want to leave. The village has been evacuated several times in the last few years, each time due to military activity. In 2015, an errant cruise missile crashed into a building in Nenoksa housing a kindergarten. No casualties were reported.
Four years later, an accident off the coast of Nenoksa killed five and resulted in a brief spike of radiation levels. Russian state energy company Rosatom said the accident took place during testing of a “isotopic sources of fuel on a liquid propulsion unit,” while the research institute the five workers belonged to later said they had been working on “the creation of small-scale sources of energy using radioactive fissile materials.” Two of those killed reportedly died of radiation poisoning and Russia’s state nuclear agency said that the two explosions at the accident site released four different radioactive isotopes.
Western sources believe the accident involved the Burevestnik (“Storm Petrel”) nuclear-powered cruise missile. Known to NATO as the SSC-X-9 “Skyfall,” Burevestnik is a first-of- its-kind very long range cruise missile powered by a miniature nuclear reactor. The use of nuclear power instead of a turbine engine should give Burevestnik the ability to fly thousands of miles—and perhaps even for days—to skirt U.S. missile defense systems. Although nuclear-powered missiles were first proposed in the 1960s, work on them never advanced beyond the early stages due to the radioactive contamination such a missile would spew during testing.

The missile test comes just days after Scandinavian countries bordering Russia detected a mysterious release of radiation. An investigation pointed to northern Russia as a source, but Moscow insisted that nearby nuclear plants were running normally. An alternate theory was that there had been a second accident involving the new nuclear cruise missile, but with what looks like a Burevestnik test coming up that too now seems unlikely.

July 9, 2020 Posted by | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Arctic heat, uncontrolled fires, crumbling permafrost – very bad climate news

July 6, 2020 Posted by | ARCTIC, climate change, Russia | Leave a comment

Russia’s nuclear imperialism in Africa

Russia’s nuclear play for power in Africa, DW 2 July 20,

Russia is pushing nuclear technology to African nations to both turn a profit and expand its political might on the continent.  Rwanda’s parliament has just approved a plan for Russia’s state-owned Rosatom nuclear conglomerate to build it a nuclear research center and reactor in the capital, Kigali.

The Center of Nuclear Science and Technologies, planned for completion by 2024, will include nuclear research labs as well as a small research reactor with up to 10 MW capacity.

Ethiopia, Nigeria and Zambia have signed similar deals with Rosatom, while countries such as Ghana, Uganda, Sudan and DRC have less expansive cooperation agreements.

Rosatom has been aggressively wooing African nations since the mid-2000s and the nuclear deals are seen as part of Russia’s push turn a profit and also gain influence in Africa.

Western sanctions first imposed on Russia in 2014 over its annexation of the Crimea in the Ukraine have forced Russia to seek alternative sources of incomes and also new friends.

Nuclear technology instead of trade

“For Putin to remain relevant in Russia, he really has to ensure that Russia has a big influence,” said Ovigwe Eguegu, a geopolitics analyst with the international affairs platform, Afripolitika. “That’s why he is looking at African markets so he has more parties to partner with when it comes to international issues.”

African nations constitute the largest voting bloc in the United Nations.

While the Soviet Union had a close relationship to various African states during the Cold War, Russia’s trade balance with Africa is one tenth of that of China, meaning it needs to look for other means to get a foothold on the continent.

“Russia is using the tools that they have to expand their influence and right now, Russia has lots of experience in the nuclear energy area,” Eguegu said in a phone interview from Abuja.

Rosatom nuclear leader

Rosatom is the world’s biggest nuclear company by foreign orders. While it has projects in developed countries such as Finland and Hungary, it’s mainly involved in developing regions.

The Rosatom packages are popular because the corporation’s sheer size means it can offer all-in-one deals, from training local workers to developing nuclear science curricula, supplying uranium for the plant’s life time and dealing with nuclear waste — with the added plus of Russian state loans for the projects.

The cost and financing of Rwanda’s nuclear research center is still undisclosed. But Russia is extending a $25 billion (€22.23 billion) loan to Egypt to cover 85% of the cost of the El Dabaa nuclear power plant, which Rosatom is constructing.

Rosatom has come to dominate nuclear exports to developing countries because of their generous financing and worker training,” according to the 2018 Center for Global Development policy paper, Atoms for Africa.

Additionally, Russia is itself a major player in the nuclear market, responsible for some 8% of uranium production worldwide as well as 20% of uranium conversion and 43% of uranium enrichment (conversion and enrichment are stages of processing uranium so it can be used by commercial nuclear power reactors)………….

many experts, including Gatari, believe that nuclear technology doesn’t yet make sense for African countries. They lack the highly skilled local workforce required to run the technological intricacies of such reactors. Plus, nuclear facilities are vastly expensive and take years to build.

Gatari warns of countries becoming locked into costly projects that end up being “white elephants”.

“Such a project can only be driven by strong and educated local human resources,” the nuclear researcher said. “That knowledge isn’t possible by rushing young students through training for a short time.

And the cost of maintaining that kind of installation can cripple the budget of a country for a long, long time.”

Doing the smooth sell

Currently, South Africa is the only country in sub-Saharan Africa with a functioning nuclear power plant, while Nigeria and Ghana have research reactors, which are primarily used for studying and training and to test materials, such as minerals.

In Europe, safety concerns around nuclear technologies have already caused countries such as Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland to vote to phase out nuclear power.

These concerns are compounded in Africa, given the the political instability of certain regions and the threat of sabotage or terrorist attacks.    This hasn’t stopped Rosatom, and Russia, from doing a soft sell of nuclear technologies on the continent.

Rosatom funds scholarships for students from sub-Saharan Africa to study nuclear sciences and engineering in Russia. As of January 2020, around 300 students from more than 15 African countries were studying nuclear specialties there.

It runs an online video competition, Atoms for Africa, where participants stand a chance to win an all expenses paid trip to Russia for a video dedicated to innovative nuclear technologies.

In 2019, it even held an international fishing competition near the Leningrad nuclear power station, Russia’s largest, to demonstrate the safety of nuclear power for water bodies. (The competition was won by an Egypt team).

“There is good money if you can sell a research reactor,” said nuclear scientist Gatari. “Unfortunately, the convincing capacity of [Rosatom’s] marketing is very high, and the understanding of those  who are buying is low.”  https://www.dw.com/en/russias-nuclear-play-for-power-in-africa/a-54004039

July 2, 2020 Posted by | AFRICA, marketing, politics international, Russia | Leave a comment

Radiation particles leak may have come from Russia’s super nuclear weapons, rather than from commercial reactor

Russia’s New Super Weapons May Be Cause Of Radiation Leak https://www.forbes.com/sites/hisutton/2020/07/01/russias-new-super-weapons-may-be-cause-of-radiation-leak/#7acff8725f8c  H I Sutton   A recent nuclear leak may be related to new nuclear-powered strategic weapons Russia is developing. These are part of a range of new ‘super weapons’ unveiled by President Putin on March 1, 2018. Russia is testing a nuclear-powered mega-torpedo called Poseidon and a nuclear-powered cruise missile called Burevestnik. If either are to blame, then it would not be the first radiation spike caused by testing one of these weapons.On June 23, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) revealed that scientists in Sweden had detected higher than usual levels of radiation. Based on analysis of the weather, the origin was projected to be in Northern Russia. Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo tweeted that they had detected “3 isotopes; Cs-134, Cs-137 & Ru-103 associated w/Nuclear fission.” He went on to say that “These isotopes are most likely from a civil source.” and that it is “outside the CTBTO’s mandate to identify the exact origin.”

Russia’s nuclear energy body has denied that the radiation originated from its two nuclear power stations in the region. However, it is not only civilian power stations that use nuclear reactors. Tom Moore, a nuclear policy expert and former senior professional staff member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, believes that these military reactors cannot be ruled out:

“CTBTO radionuclide monitoring is intended to discriminate explosive events and to complement seismic monitoring. Not to effectively rule in or rule out a source of radionuclides as being civil or military reactors.”

Possible Cause: Burevestnik Cruise Missile

The first military system under development which comes to mind is the Burevestnik cruise missile. Its name means ‘Storm Bringer’ in Russian, after the Petral sea bird. It is more formally known by the designation 9M730 and NATO code name Skyfall. This is a nuclear-armed cruise missile that is designed to use a nuclear engine to give it virtually unlimited range. Burevestnik is the natural candidate because it is airborne, so any accident would likely release radioactive material into the sky.

This may have previously happened on August 9, 2019. There was a fatal radiation incident at the State Central Navy Testing Range at Nyonoksa. This is near to Severodvinsk in Russia’s arctic north, the same area that the CTBTO has pointed towards this time. Then it was caused by an explosion in a rocket engine. Many analysts believe that this was most likely related to the Burevestnik missile.

Possible Cause: Poseidon Drone-Torpedo

The other weapon in the frame is Poseidon. This is a massive nuclear-powered torpedo that is intended to be launched from specially built submarines. At 60-78 feet long it is about twice the size of a Trident missile. Its designation is believed to be 2m39 and it is known in NATO as Kanyon. Its virtually unlimited range and high autonomy would make it hard to classify. The U.S. government has described it as an intercontinental, nuclear armed, undersea autonomous torpedo. It is a weapon worthy of a Bond villain that would literally go underneath missile defenses. Its threat is slow but inevitable doom to coastal cities such as New York and Los Angeles.

While Poseidon probably doesn’t have very much shielding on its reactor, it is normally underwater, so any radiation leak may not reach the atmosphere. But it would be lifted out of the water after a test launch, so there is room for an incident that could get detected hundreds of miles away in Scandinavia.

Open Source Intelligence On The Suspects

Open source intelligence analysts have been following these weapons. Evgeniy Maksimov noted that flight tests of Burevestnik were probably being conducted. He noted two no-fly zones closed for June 22-27 at a missile test range. But the launch site was far south of where the radiation is believed to originate.

A better candidate may therefore be Poseidon. Vessels believed to be associated with its tests were active in the region at the time. The special support vessel Akademik Aleksandrov was at sea around June 18 to 23, in the area of interest. This ship is suspected of being involved in retrieving Poseidon weapons. Twitter user Frank Bottema found a matching vessel using radar satellite imagery.

We may never know for sure the cause of the heightened radiation levels. But Russia’s denials that it was from a civilian power plant, combined with the ongoing tests, point a finger at the nuclear-powered weapons. This reignites the debate about how safe these projects are, even in peacetime.

July 2, 2020 Posted by | radiation, Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Radioactive particles in atmosphere: Russia tells IAEA it has had no nuclear incidents

Russia Tells IAEA It Is Incident-Free After Nuclear Particle Increase, https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/06/30/world/europe/30reuters-nuclear-particles-baltic-russia.html  By Reuters
June 30, 2020  VIENNA — Russia has told the U.N. atomic watchdog there have been no nuclear incidents on its territory that could explain elevated but still harmless levels of radioactive particles detected on the Baltic Sea last week, the U.N. agency said on Tuesday.

A separate body, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), which watches for nuclear weapon tests, said on Friday a monitoring station in Sweden had found higher-than-usual levels of caesium-134, caesium-137 and ruthenium-103. The CTBTO said they were produced by nuclear fission.

CTBTO chief Lassina Zerbo posted a borderless map https://twitter.com/SinaZerbo/status/1276559857731153921?s=20 online showing where the particles might have come from in the 72 hours before they were detected – an area covering the tips of Denmark and Norway as well as southern Sweden, much of Finland, Baltic countries and part of western Russia including St. Petersburg.

All those countries except Denmark, which has no nuclear power plants http://www.ensreg.eu/country-profile/Denmark, and Russia, which has a history of not fully explaining incidents that emitted radioactive particles, told the International Atomic Energy Agency by Monday that there were no events on their territory that could explain the increase.

On Tuesday evening, however, the IAEA issued a statement https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/more-countries-provide-radioisotope-information-to-iaea-reported-levels-very-low saying the list of countries that had declared themselves incident-free had grown to around 40 and now included Denmark and Russia.

“Apart from Estonia, Finland and Sweden, none of the other countries which have so far provided information and data to the IAEA said they had detected elevated radioisotope levels,” said the IAEA, which asked member states for information over the weekend after the CTBTO announcement.

Asked on Monday if Russia was the origin of the elevated particle levels, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow had detected no sign of a radiation emergency.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

July 2, 2020 Posted by | radiation, Russia | Leave a comment

Russia’s environmental groups protest nuclear waste imports

Russia is not a dump!

Stories of solidarity under coronavirus  http://www.foeeurope.org/covidsolidarity-russia

25 June 20    Coronavirus hasn’t affected everyone equally. We’re sharing stories from across our European and global network of what lockdown and life under coronavirus look like around the world. Hearing from those who are among the worst affected, and how they are taking action.

I’m with Russia

Russia and Germany have taken advantage of the coronavirus crisis to resume shipping radioactive waste to dump in the Urals and Siberia in northern Russia.

When Russian environmental groups discovered, in autumn 2019, that Germany was exporting radioactive waste from it’s nuclear power stations to Russia, via the harbor of Amsterdam, they directly organized protests in the three countries.

Those protests had success, and the transport by rail and sea of uranium – a waste product of nuclear fuel production by Urenco Germany – was put on hold. That was before the coronavirus crisis hit.

But in March 2020, when Covid-19 lockdowns restricted people’s right to protest in Russia even further, the shipments of radioactive waste were set to resume.

BBC news reports that twelve rail cars carrying 600 tonnes of depleted uranium left Germany bound for Russia earlier this week.

Vitaly Servetnik from Russian Social–Ecological Union/Friends of the Earth Russia said:

“This radioactive waste is being sent to the Urals and Siberia. There it will be stored in containers above ground posing a direct danger to the environment and people living in the area. Disguised as a commercial transaction between Rosatom and Urenco, Germany exports its radioactive waste problem.”

Olaf Bandt, chair of BUND / Friends of the Earth Germany said:

“The federal government stands by while part of the unresolved nuclear waste problem moves quietly and secretly to Russia. German nuclear waste should not be disposed of in other countries, putting lives of people in danger. Germany must finally complete the nuclear phase-out.”

In response, the Russian Social–Ecological Union/Friends of the Earth Russia and other environmental and human rights groups organised a digital action. Images of activists holding signs reading “No uranium tails!” and “Russia is not a dump!” flooded social media.

June 30, 2020 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, Russia, wastes | Leave a comment

Russia denies its nuclear plants are source of radiation leak 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53214259, 28 June, 20

Russia has said a leak of nuclear material detected over Scandinavia did not come from one of its power plants.

Nuclear safety watchdogs in Finland, Norway and Sweden said last week they had found higher-than-usual amounts of radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere.

A Dutch public health body said that, after analysing the data, it believed the material came “from the direction of western Russia”.

It said the material could indicate “damage to a fuel element”.

But in a statement, Russia’s nuclear energy body said its two power stations in the north-west – the Leningrad NPP and the Kola NPP – were working normally and that no leaks had been reported.

“There have been no complaints about the equipment’s work,” a spokesperson for the state controlled nuclear power operator Rosenergoatom told Tass news agency.

“Aggregated emissions of all specified isotopes in the above-mentioned period did not exceed the reference numbers.”

Radiation levels around the two powers stations “have remained unchanged in June”, the spokesperson added.

Lassina Zerbo, executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) tweeted on Friday that its Stockholm monitoring station had detected three isotopes – Cs-134, Cs-137 and Ru-103 – at higher than usual levels but not harmful to human health.

The particles were detected on 22-23 June, he said.

The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands said on Friday that the composition of the nuclear material “may indicate damage to a fuel element in a nuclear power plant”.

The International Atomic Energy Agency – the UN’s nuclear watchdog – said on Saturday it was aware of the reports and was seeking more information from member states.

June 29, 2020 Posted by | radiation, Russia | Leave a comment

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