News
Publish date: October 28, 2003
News
On October 7th and 8th, 2003, Murmansk hosted a meeting of the Presidium Russian State Council working group meeting headed by the Murmansk region Governor Yury Yevdokimov. The meeting raised the issue of international cooperation development in the field of nuclear and radiation safety. Deputy Minister of Atomic Energy Sergey Antipov, representatives of the Foreign Ministry, Natural Resources Ministry, Transport Ministry, delegations of Kamchatka, Chelyabinsk and Astrakhan region participated in the meeting.
According to Regnum news agency, the main issue discussed at the meeting was how to attract foreign investments to solve the problem of radioactive waste in Murmansk region. The Russian State budget allocates $66m annually for nuclear and radiation safety, while $1.2 billion total is needed to solve all the problems. Therefore, western aid could significantly speed up the clean-up works in the region. Today the biggest problem for western donors is Russian high taxes and access to the nuclear sites, head of Murmansk region information department Kirill Babayev admitted. Yury Yevdokimov said the hardest sites for access in Murmansk region are Andreeva bay, Sayda bay and technical base in Ostrovnoy as well as retired multipurpose nuclear submarines. The members of the working group should report about the work done to the State Council Presidium and the Russian President in December this year.
Throughout the past year, our mission at the Bellona Environmental Transparency Center has focused on two key, but intertwined issues—nuclear and radiation safety as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, and the worldwide influence of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, which itself is actively involved in the war and has participated in the occupation of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant.
At the beginning of the year, reports in the German and Russian press suggested an approximate 70% increase in uranium imports from Russia to Germany in 2024. But does this reflect broader European trends? It does not. Overall, imports of uranium and nuclear fuel from Russia to Western countries actually dropped sharply in 2024. Unlike the situation in Germany, this is already an established trend.
A Lingen, Germany plant could begin producing nuclear fuel in cooperation with a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear corporation, which is directly involved in the war in Ukraine and occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.