News
Publish date: June 2, 1998
Written by: Igor Kudrik
News
A group consisting of representative from British Nuclear Fuel, Norwegian Foreign Ministry, Norwegian Environmental Ministry and Norwegian Radiation Protection Agency visited Murmansk in late May to discuss the possibilities to solve the issue of Andreeva Bay on the Kola Peninsula, reported Murmansk daily Polyarnaya Pravda.
The group considered a project submitted by Engineering Centre of Environmental Safety based in Zaozersk, a closed military city located some 10 kilometres from Andreeva Bay. The project’s goal is to turn the ground waters away from the accidental storage facility in the bay, thus priventing radioactive contamination of Zapadnaya Litsa Fjord.
There are no reports that international experts will be allowed into Andreeva Bay itself. The price tag for the project is some 1,5 million USD. The first stage of the works is reportedly to be launched in July this year.
In Andreeva Bay there is the largest and the only operational storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in the Northern Fleet. According to available estimates, more 21 000 fuel assembles are stored here. A part of the fuel is placed in the unshielded site outside the facility, open for the sever condition of the Arctic winter.
Recent attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "mark the beginning of a new and gravely dangerous front of the war," the UN atomic agency's director general said last week.
After years of inaction, Germany is working on its Carbon Management Strategy to resolve how CCS can play a role in climate action in industry. At the end of February, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action published first key points and a proposal to amend the law Kohlenstoffdioxid Speicherungsgesetz (KSpG). Bellona Deutschland, who was actively involved in the previous stakeholder dialogue submitted a statement in the association hearing.
In the midst of a global discussion on whether natural gas should be used as a transitional fuel and whether emissions from its extraction, production, transport and use are significantly less than those from other fossil fuels, Russia has developed ambitious plans to increase its own production of liquified natural gas (LNG) in the Arctic – a region with 75% of proven gas reserves in Russia – to raise its share in the international gas trade.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our main focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution risks and climate change.