Monthly Highlights from the Russian Arctic, July 2024
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.
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Publish date: May 9, 2005
News
The decision to close it has been taken under pressure from the West, said former Russian Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov, who is in the Swiss prison now. He was addressing the sitting of the Ignalina commission in the Lithuanian parliament (Seim) on April 13, RIA-Novosti reported.
He said that both power units of the Ignalina plant are as safe as similar reactors of the same age in the West Europe and are designed for 45 years service life. The first unit of the Ignalina nuclear power plant, started up in 1983, has lifetime until 2029 and the second unit until 2031, Adamov said. He noted that all the investigation and design data shows that no grounds exist for closing the Ignalina facility and it is "a purely political decision".
Lithuania shut down the first Ignalina reactor (Chernobyl type) on December 31, 2004, and pledged to put the entire plant out of service by December 31, 2009. This was one of the principal conditions for Lithuania’s entering the European Union in May 2004. The government of Lithuania has estimated the Ignalina closure at three billion euros (including expenses on the social sector).
Last March Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas said that, "closure of the second power unit of the Ignalina plant by 2010 would be possible only if Lithuania joins the West European energy system".
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.
UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on Tuesday warned during a visit to Russia's Kursk nuclear plant that its proximity to ongoing fighting was "extremely serious" following Ukraine's cross-border offensive into the southwestern Kursk region earlier this month.
Two years after laying the cornerstone for the production facility, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre inaugurated Morrow Batteries, Europe’s first giga...
It is a scenario the Russian side is taking seriously. Already Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, had begun withdrawing staff from the plant and Russian troops are hastily digging trenches around it