Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 26 – Thirty-four
years ago today, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant suffered a meltdown that
released massive amounts of radiation, poisoning the area around the station
and compromising the environment and public health. Tragically,
environmentalists say, the problems at Russia’s nuclear stations are “no less”
today than they were then.
Vitaly Servetnik, vice president of
the Russian Social-Ecological Union, says that on this anniversary as in recent
years, the authorities and the media treat Chernobyl as something awful but
also as something that cannot happen again (7x7-journal.ru/articles/2020/04/24/problem-s-mirnym-atomom-ne-menshe-chem-vo-vremena-chernobylya-ekolog-vitalij-servetnik-o-radioaktivnom-nasledii-sssr-i-ugrozah-yadernym-aktivistam).
But that is not true, he continues. “Our
problems with the peaceful atom are no less” than they were then.” Instead,
there is an even greater variety and in even more places around the country.
And his group is committed to supporting activists who are working to address
this issue in the regions where plants and nuclear waste sites are located.
“About 70 percent of the reactors in
Russian atomic power plants were built in the 1970s and had a planned work life
of 30 years.” Consequently, most of them are well-past their expiration date
and should have been replaced or shut down. But Rosatom has simply extended
their time in service, Servetnik says.
Not only has the government’s atomic
power agency done so without consulting experts, it has made the problem worse
by increasing the pressure at most plants so as to be able to produce more
electricity even though that strategy means that the plants are more not less
likely to suffer accidents.
In Europe, all Chernobyl-type
graphite reactors have been shut down as too dangerous; but in the Russian
Federation, they continue to be used and at higher pressures. Some of the largest
of these facilities are the Leningrad, Smolensk, and Kursk atomic power
stations, the environmentalist continues.
Since Chernobyl, another and even
larger problem has emerged: the storage of nuclear waste. Moscow has operated
on the principle of “bury and forget,” Servetnik says. “The majority of Russian atomic power
stations are in the European portion of the country, but radioactive wastes …
are processed and buried in the Urals and Siberia.”
As a result, he says, one part of the
country gets the benefit of nuclear power while an entirely different part
suffers from it.
This problem too is made worse by
the way in which the Russian government operates. Russian law bans the import
of radioactive waste, “but there is an exception: they can be imported for
reprocessing.” What Rosatom has done and is doing, Servetnik says, is import
these dangerous materials to make money and buried them for the time being.
As always on Chernobyl
anniversaries, there have been numerous stories about that disaster because
everyone fears radiation. Three are especially important: The first notes that on
the date of the accident only one person died but that since then tens of thousands
have suffered premature deaths from radiation (snob.ru/selected/entry/123733/).
Second, those who helped with the
cleanup 34 years ago are being forgotten, in large measure because Moscow used
more non-Russians than Russians to take part in that dangerous work (belsat.eu/ru/in-focus/chernobyltsy-v-belarusi-i-ukraine-chuvstvuyut-sebya-zabytymi/
and stanradar.com/news/full/39303-tadzhikskie-likvidatory-vspominajut-rabotu-na-chernobylskoj-aes.html).
And third, ever more evidence is
being presented that the Soviet authorities knew well in advance about the
problems of Chernobyl but did little or nothing to head them off (apostrophe.ua/news/society/accidents/2020-04-26/znali-zaranee-gromkie-faktyi-ob-avarii-na-chaes-kotoryie-pyitalis-skryit-/195163).
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