News
Publish date: February 28, 2008
News
On an absolutely unchallenged campaign swing through Nizhny Novgorod, Medvedev was asked to address a remark from an audience member from the Chelyabinsk Region, home to the Mayak Chemical Combine, the most radioactively contaminated place on earth.
"There is a need to turn to prosecutors when someone refuses to listen to reason," Medvedev responded.
Indeed, residents of the Chelyabisnk region have turned to prosecutors many times to protest the dumping of liquid radioactive waste into the river system in the area, and the Mayak plant has only been shut down once for a short period of time in the last decade.
Yet Medvedev told the audience it was time for “the government to get down to solving ecological problems in earnest,” and supported a mechanism bny which polluting enterprises are held accountable for environmental damage. "We must create such conditions for business as to discourage waste dumping," he said without elaborating.
Throughout the past year, our mission at the Bellona Environmental Transparency Center has focused on two key, but intertwined issues—nuclear and radiation safety as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, and the worldwide influence of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, which itself is actively involved in the war and has participated in the occupation of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant.
At the beginning of the year, reports in the German and Russian press suggested an approximate 70% increase in uranium imports from Russia to Germany in 2024. But does this reflect broader European trends? It does not. Overall, imports of uranium and nuclear fuel from Russia to Western countries actually dropped sharply in 2024. Unlike the situation in Germany, this is already an established trend.
A Lingen, Germany plant could begin producing nuclear fuel in cooperation with a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear corporation, which is directly involved in the war in Ukraine and occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.