
Russia Targets Bellona Vilnius Staffer with ‘Prosecution by Red Tape’
News
Publish date: November 30, 2000
Written by: Edward Meilakh
News
Officials at the Mayak reprocessing plant announced that they had started collecting signatures in the Chelyabinsk region in support for the construction of the South-Ural nuclear power plant. The nuclear industry is taking in use the tactics of NGOs, which they despised earlier.
Commenting on the signatures collected by environmental groups all over Russia for a national environmental vote, nuclear officials said “technical questions must be resolved by experts, without any public involvement”. But now they feel a need to rely on the public opinion as well in attempt to get support for the construction of the highly controversial South-Ural nuclear power plant.
The forms used to collect signatures have no fields such as ‘place of residence’ or ‘passport number’. Therefore there is a way open for forgery.
Sociologist Nadezhda Kutepova from the closed nuclear city of Ozersk says she fears the signatures will be collected in Ozersk only. This city totally depend on the Mayak reprocessing plant, and the population will be naturally supportive towards a new nuclear power plant.
“Anyway, we can expect that the collected signatures will be used only for a political pressure, because without passport numbers they have no legal ground,” says Kutepova.
The construction of the South-Ural nuclear power plant started in 1987, but the work was halted in 1989 after the local county administration opposed the plan. The plant’s construction site is situated 10 kilometres from Ozersk, north of Chelyabinsk City.
The month of June marks a time that Frederic Hauge, founder of Bellona, has worked toward and anticipated for 30 years. On June 18th, full-scale carb...
Moscow is building powerlines in Russian-occupied southeastern Ukraine to link the major nuclear power plant it seized as a prize of war to its own e...
Global shipping is responsible for around 3% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Just last month, in April 2025, the International Maritime Organizati...