Monthly Highlights from the Russian Arctic, October 2024
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.
News
Publish date: October 1, 2004
News
According to the specialists, Yagrinsky Bridge in Severodvinsk connecting Zvezdochka plant engaged in nuclear submarine dismantling, with the continent. The bridge was built 50 years ago and according to the former Science Research Institute Promtransproject, where it was designed, the bridge moved horizontally and the main bridge girders lost the possibility for temperature expansion. In other words the bridge can collapse when the heavy trains with spent nuclear fuel or scrap metal pass, daily MK in Arkhangelsk reports.
Zvezdochkas press secretary Nadezhda Scherbinina said to Regnum.ru that the shipyards management is constantly raises the issue of the bridge problem at the meetings with the foreign partners. The cost of the repairs is kept secret. The state budget has no money for the bridge repairs, so there is a possibility that the bridge can be repaired in the frames of G8 Global Partnership program, as it also stipulates safety of the place where dismantling takes place. Scherbinina confirmed the need of the reconstruction but denied the possibility of the nuclear accident claiming that before each train with nuclear fuel passes, a thorough technical evaluation is conducted. She states the bridge cannot collapse now or even in 3 years. It just cant happen she said to Regnum.ru.
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.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
A visit last week by Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin entourage to Astana, Kazakhstan sought in part to put Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, on good footing with local officials.
Russia is formally withdrawing from a landmark environmental agreement that channeled billions in international funding to secure the Soviet nuclear legacy, leaving undone some of the most radioactively dangerous projects and burning one more bridge of potential cooperation with the West.