
Bellona Nuclear Digest. November-December 2024
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
News
Publish date: June 25, 2014
News
With Russia’s annexation of Crimea we have seen energy security being pushed up the EU’s political agenda as the 28 Member States deliberate on a plan to reduce reliance on natural gas from the Moscow-controlled OAO Gazprom. Simultaneously, the Member States plan to finalise the 2030 Climate and Energy Package by October 2014, laying out targets that include reducing emissions by 40% by 2030 from 1990 levels.
Poland, which relies on coal for more than 80% of its electricity and power generation, has suggested that the EU proceed at a slower pace with regards to climate change mitigation measures. In the opinion of Pawel Smolen, president of EURACOAL “de-carbonisaton means de-electrification, which is impossible”. Davey rightly recognises this to be incorrect, and that an EU-wide solution to supporting CCS development in Poland or elsewhere is essential as part of a package to tackle coal emissions.
A report of the International Energy Agency (IEA) states that annual spending on low-carbon technologies and energy efficiency needs to double to about EUR 580 billion by 2020 from 2013 levels to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. Moreover, according to the IEA, delayed CCS deployment would increase the cost of power sector decarbonisation globally by EUR 1 trillion through 2035 and result to lost sales of fossil-fuel producers. Therefore, Davey urges the early deployment of CCS in order to attain a low-carbon world by 2050 cost-effectively.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
A military drone with a high-explosive warhead struck the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine overnight, damaging a protective shelter that prevents radiation leaks at the plant’s destroyed fourth reactor unit, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Friday.
Russia has officially withdrawn from an international environmental agreement that brought to bear billions of dollars from EU nations and the United States on addressing the nuclear legacy of the Soviet Union.
This article by Angelina Davydova, editor of Bellona’s Ecology & Rights magazine, first appeared in The Moscow Times. The oil spill in ...