Bellona nuclear digest. August 2024
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
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Publish date: February 3, 2005
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The report deals with the safety violations at the plant, analyzing them in several aspects. Bellonas expert Alexander Nikitin wrote the foreword, emphasizing that everything in the report Kharitonov had learned at first hand.
"The 30 years of experience he had at the plant afforded him an abundance of facts and materials to bring forth to the public," Nikitin wrote.
"Bellona does not necessarily stand behind all the claims stated by Kharitonov in his report. Kharitonov, however,an eyewitness with profound experience and an author in his own rightis entitled to such viewpoints," he added.
On December 11th 2004, the first Leningrad NPP reactor unit with a Chernobyl-type RBMK reactor, which exceeded its 30-year life-span in 2003, was put back into operation. The extension of the service term was made despite of protests of the European Commission and a number of Western politicians. Environmentalistsfrom Greenworld, local NGO, and other organisationsclaim the extension is illegal without the state environmental evaluation, because the reactor unit underwent not just simple repairs, but a kind of total upgrade.
In 2000, Kharitonov was fired from Leningrad NPP for blowing the whistle on numerous safety violations at the plant. But he continues his struggle for safer environment and this report is a proof of that.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
Kazakhstan voted in a referendum last weekend on whether to build its first nuclear power plant, and an exit poll showed voters backed the idea promoted by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's cabinet in an effort to phase out coal plants.
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