News
Publish date: September 30, 1999
Written by: Thomas Nilsen
News
Russian envirogroups staged actions of protest in major cities of Siberia where Russian Nuclear Ministry plans to build storage sites for imported spent nuclear fuel.
 Action of protest in front of Chelyabinsk County Administration building. |
 The banner says: Better Be Active Than Radioactive. |
 Police is about to arrest the protesters.
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Natalia Mironova, the leader of a Chelyabinsk-based Movement for Nuclear Safety, was arrested Wednesday together with four other local environmentalist after protesting against the plans to import foreign spent nuclear fuel to Siberia. After some hours in custody she was released, but she still has to face a court hearing on October 4. Two of the other activists remained in custody Thursday awaiting the court hearing.
The activists blocked the entrance to the Administration Building downtown Chelyabinsk on the anniversary of the Kysthym-accident, one of the Russia’s worst nuclear accident, which happened on September 29, 1957, at Mayak plant’s secret plutonium factory.
At the same time the activists delivered 2.000 signatures against the plans to import spent nuclear fuel from other countries for storage in Siberia. Several other environmental groups in Chelyabinsk participated in the demonstration.
“We want to make it clear for the federal authorities that the population in Siberia is strongly against the import of nuclear waste,” Mironova said to Bellona Web after she was released from custody.
Similar demonstrations were arranged this week in the Siberian cities of Novosibirsk and Tomsk. An appeal protesting the nuclear waste import plans signed by local environmental groups in Krasnoyarsk was sent to Russian Ministry for Atomic Energy, or Minatom, in Moscow. Krasnoyarsk is the most likely location for foreign spent nuclear fuel storage.
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.