Evironmentalists disappointed with sham public hearing on Leningrad NPP 2
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Leningrad NPP
Many members of the public were turned away from the hearings on the LNPP 2 in Sosnovy Bor on Wedneday.
Rashid Alimov/Bellona
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Public hearings on the construction of any structure that might impact the enviroment are a requirment of Russian law. But the procedures are often little more than window dressing for contractors to make decorative but empty attempts at fulfilling their legal requirements – if indeed they bother to hold hearings at all.
A throng of residents of Sosnovy Bor– the home to the LNPP and the prospective location of LNPP 2 - braved minus double digit temparatures to crowd the doors of Sosnovy Bor's House of Culture where the “Public Hearing on the Evaluation of the Environmental Impact of the Leningrad NPP 2 project” was held
One of the organizers of the event shouted out from behind the door that there was no room for the public, and summoned a police officer to stand guard at the locked door.
The doors did open once to allow officials from Rosenergoatom – Russia’s nuclear energy utility – and representatives of one foreign consulate to enter, but the door slammed shut again.
The foyer of the House of Culture was stacked with glossy Rosenergoatom-published brochures and magazines and LNPP press releases. There were, however, no copies of the “Evaluation of Environmental Impact” (OVOS in its Russian acronym) that was the subject of the hearing, available to the public.
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The only possible way for the public to acquaint itself with the OVOS before the hearing would have been to view it in Sosnovy Bor or at the regional center for Russia’s Federal Agency for Atomic Energy, or Rosatom, in St. Petersburg. Xeroxing the document was not allowed, but people were allowed to photograph it.
“I think the OVOS should have been posted on the Internet. The fact that they didn’t indicates secrecy and the conscious creation of inconvenience,” Yulia Korshunova of the Apatiti-based environmental group Geya told Bellona Web.
The non-existent hearing
“The matter is not that all of today’s event corresponds to the constitution and to the conditions of public hearings, but that Rosatom has begun to meet and discuss (with the public) before questions escalate to conflict,” said Vyacheslav Glazychev, a member of the public chamber of the Duma as well as a member of the public council of Rosatom.
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| Rashid Alimov/Bellona |
Bellona Web wrote in late 2006 about the amendments to Russian legislation that changed policies on state environmental inspections for the building of a majority of installations including nuclear power stations. In accordance with these changes, which took effect January 1st, inspections assuring adherence to construction norms are carried out instead of environmental impact studies. But these construction norms do not exist yet. Furthermore, the far-reaching environmental consequences of future construction projects are not being considered in these norms.
The democratic mechanisms of the OVOS document, the public hearings on its evaluations, and the independent environmental studies are not longer in effect.
When asked what the legal status and consequences of Thursday’s public hearing would be relative to the recent changes in the law, Glazychev replied that: “In the first place, atomic and radiation installations are not affected by the changes. But the legal consequences of the meeting are very important.”
Greenpeace-Russia’s Vladimir Chuprov, who was present at the hearings, told Bellona Web that “Glazychev’s answer had pulled the wool over the eyes of all those present, including the representatives of foreign governments.”
The amendments adopted by the Duma in December equate nuclear power plants to other construction sites relative to which all procedures of environmental evaluations have been changed.
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| Rashid Alimov/Bellona |
Present in the meeting hall were the representatives of the consulates of the United States, Finland, Sweden and Estonia, and members of international environmental organizations.
“The fact of the matter is that Russia signed the Espoo Convention and therefore Rosatom is required to conduct hearings on environmental impact studies and invite foreign parties to take part in them. Despite that, Russia has cancelled state environmental impact studies and no regulations exist for conducting them,” said Bellona jurist Olga Krivonos.
The Espoo Convention of 1991, which deals with evaluating trans-national environmental impact, envisions information sharing about potentially dangerous projects between states that share borders – for example the construction of a nuclear power plant. The convention ensures that representatives of neighboring states can participate in public hearings on such potential projects.
“In that sense, there is an environmental impact study for foreigners,” said Krivonos. “But if we take issue with the regulations of these hearings, they answer that by Russian legislation there are no hearings – there is no mechanism allowing for the consideration of remarks and suggestions made today by participants of the hearing.”
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According to Krivonos, because the hearings have no legal traction, the leaders parceled out a lot of time to questions that had no relation to the environmental impact study, focussing instead on a new train station and the creation of a theater in Sosnovy Bor, as well as job vacancies for construction workers.
Nevertheless, the head of the Sosnovy Bor municipal district, Dmitry Pulyaevsky, brought up the non-existent mechanisms.
“The most important task is to document all questions - they will be the base for state environmental evaluations. Its decision will be taken in account to each question and opinion that has been voiced here,” he said.
At the end of the hearing, Pulyaevsky summed up by saying “we have been present for an important international event.”
Alexander Nikitin, head of Bellona’s office in St. Petersburg – located 70 kilometers east of Sosnovy Bor – came to a less enthusiastic conclusion.
“We observed a grand spectacle,” he said in an interview. Nikitin had expressed his desire to take the podium, but was repeatedly passed over by the hearing's moderator and was never given the chance to speak.
Dangerous gaps
The majority of environmentalists are against the construction of LNPP 2.
“Having reached no decision on how to decommission the existing nuclear power station, Rosatom wants to build a new one,” said Nikitin.
It is planned that the energy blocks at the existing LNPP will cease operations between 2018 and 2025.
Nevertheless, authorities in the Leningrad Region – which surrounds St. Petersburg – support the project. Leningrad Regional government representative Sergei Kuklin said that “over the past years in the Leningrad Region and the entire Northwest area, all indicators point to stable and steady economic growth…the decision to build new energy sources is timely.”
Kuklin recalled that the site for the new NPP had already decided by the regional governor on May 31st, 2006.
According to Alexander Kazarin of Atomenergoproekt, who worked out the OVOS, it is planned that two 1150 megawatt VVER reacor blocks will come online in 2013 or 2014 at the LNPP 2.
Environmentalists who saw the OVOS at the hearing, however, said it was unsatisfactory, most particularly in the area of public safety and shields against terrorism.
“The documentation of the environmental impact study includes a number of dangerous gaps,” said Greenpeace’s Chuprov.
For instance, the planners include a hermetic envelope for the reactor that can withstand a blow from a 20 ton airplane. But most passenger planes made by Boeing weigh more than 200 tons. The plan also fails to take into account other serious acts of terrorism that could affect millions – not only St. Petersburg residents but citizens of neighboring states.
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“The station is well defended – in what manner we cannot say because terrorists will find out,” said Rosenergoatom Deputy General Director Vladmir Asmolov.
Other accidents and incidents at the current LNPP are frequent and well documented.
In 1975, St. Petersburg was affected by radiation as the result of a toxic cloud that escaped after an accident at the still-operational reactor number one at the LNPP. The city also experienced fallout from Chernobyl. The history of the LNPP is also fraught with emergency stoppages of reactors, some of which were the result of stolen equipment or simple neglect – but managers of the nuclear installation draw no conclusions from these incidents.
One of the most important questions at the LNPP – which still remains unanswered - is what to do with the station’s radioactive waste. Documentation mentions a regional repository for nuclear waste and a plant for its reprocessing. But where and when these facilities will be built are a subject that the documentation remains silent on.
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But will these facilities if built, asked Chuprov rhetorically, be cleaner and safer than the notorious Mayak reprocessing facility?
Rosenergoatom’s Aslamov asserted that “Russia has the technology to deal with spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste.” This despite the fact that Mayak routinely runs at only 25 percent of its engineered capacity and can handle waste only from older generation reactors and submarines.
The current LNPP cools itself by emptying its excess heat into the Gulf of Finland. The two VVER-1150 blocks anticipated for the LNPP 2 will be cooled by four 150-meter cooling towers. In the prepared OVOS, the authors confess that the cooling towers could lead to a change in air temperature, the creation of fog, and intensified fallout of radioactive aerosols. Radioactive isotopes from the LNPP chimney spread out over a wide area, but when they start to mingle with larger drops of steam emissions from the cooling tower, they fall over a smaller area, notably over Sosnovy Bor.
“I fear that Sosnovy Bor will become a city of radioactive fog,” said Lina Zernova, a representative of the green faction of the Yabloko political party.
According to the plan and to existing practices, radiation safety and taking the nuclear power stations out of service should be financed by the money a plant makes on electricity sales. Today, these funds are far too depleated to cover all active stations. There exists today no plan to decommission and dismantle the existing LNPP. The authors of the LNPP 2 plan have suggested nothing principally new for decommissioning that plant when the time comes, and how this question will be resolved is open to speculation.
“The authors of the project don’t want to see cheap and safe alternatives to nuclear power for regional energy development – such as modernizing gas powered plants. New technologies allow one to burn gas in a more rational manner – with a coefficient of useful energy of more than 50 percent as opposed to the current 30 percent. With their help, we can easily get by without new nuclear reactors,” said Chuprov.
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