News
Publish date: August 13, 1997
Written by: Igor Kudrik
News
This year the remaining stocks of nuclear warheads will be shipped from Ukraine to Russia. After the separation of Ukraine from the Russian Federation in the beginning of the ‘nineties, the agreement was reached on delivering nuclear fuel for Ukrainian nuclear power plants in exchange for the nuclear warheads. From now on, Ukraine will have to pay for the fuel. The estimated annual cost is some 300 million USD.
Ukraine operates 5 nuclear power plants, with 13 VVER-1000 reactors and one RBMK-1000 reactor. Five additional reactor installations of VVER-1000 type are under construction.
Meanwhile, there are reasons to believe that the Ministry of Atomic Energy of Russia generously will accept delays in the payment from Ukraine. As stated by Minatom minister Victor Mikhailov during his visit to Ukraine in the first part of August, Russia would not stop the fuel delivery even if Ukraine does not pay the bills. The fuel would rather be lent to the country.
On the other hand, according to the governor of Krasnoyarsk county, the Krasnoyarsk-26 spent fuel storage facility will no longer accept spent fuel from Ukrainian VVER-1000s. The debt of Ukraine for the year 1996, letting alone previous years, has reached 2.73 million USD. It won’t be a big surprise if this conflict between Russia and the Ukraine will be handled by Minatom in the same generous way.
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.