‘Nuclear monsters’ protest groundbreaking of the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant 2
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Leningrad NPP
Protesters carry a banner reading "The LNPP 2 - The New Chernobyl."
Rashid Alimov/Bellona
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Sosnovy Bor is already home to the original Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, an aged and scandal plagued facility that runs on four fatally flawed Chernobyl-style RBMK 1000 reactors.
Saturday’s protest was marked by activists dressing up in skeleton masks and hazmat suits to lay cement for the foundation of the new nuclear power plant.
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| Anna Kireeva/Bellona |
“We want to remind residents of this city that prior to the accident at Chernobyl, the renowned Russian academic Alexandrov said nuclear power plants were so safe that you could build them on Red Square – and that now it is not worth listening to the assurances about the safety and reliability of nuclear power plants,” said Alimov.
Bellona attempted to conduct an independent environmental impact study of the LNPP 2 project. On November 5th, a hearing will be held in the city’s Smolninskoye district court on Bellona’s complaint that its petition to conduct this study was not registered, and that project documentation was not provided to environmentalists.
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| Rashid Alimov/Bellona |
Some 20 activists took part in the protest, unfurling the Bellona banner and another that read “LNPP 2 – the new Chernobyl.
Bellona activists also collected signatures on postcards that will be sent to Russian President Dmitry Medvedyev with the call that he refuse to build the new nuclear power plant. Signatures were also collected on a demand that Russia ratify the Espoo Convention of 1991, which stipulates that environmental impact studies must be conducted not only in counties where large scale industrial projects are to take place, but also in neighboring counties whose environments may be impacted by such projects.
It is namely this international document that allows citizens of other countries to participate in discussions of projects implemented by other governments and apply pressure should dangers to their environments be detected. In Bellona’s opinion, the ratification of the Espoo convention would allow Russian citizens to participate in the decision making process on implementing environmentally dangerous projects in other countries, and bring Russian environmental legislation into accord with European standards.
Many passers-by at the protest stopped in solidarity with the activists and signed the postcards and the appeal. Activists from St. Peterburg’s Bellona office were joined by members of Bellona-Murmansk’s staff.
“In Murmansk, we are also fighting against the construction of nuclear power plants – the construction of the Kola NPP 2,” said Anna Kireeva.
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| Rashid Alimov/Bellona |
An informational stand set up by the environmentalists listed the fundamental assertions against building a new nuclear power plant near St. Petersburg, which included:
1.) Environmentalists were not allowed to conduct an independent environmental impact study of the LNPP 2 project.
2.) Documents relative to an accident at the original Leningrad Nuclear power Plant in 1975 remain classified.
3.) The original Leningrad NPP runs on fatally flawed Chernobyl-style RBMK 1000 reactors.
4.) Problems of safely storing nuclear waste have not been solved by any country in the world.
5.) There are as yet no plans that have been worked out for the decommissioning of the original Leningrad NPP.
6.) The engineered life-spans for two reactor blocks at the Leningrad NPP were illegally extended without the conduction of an environmental impact study.
7.) Some 78 percent of Russian are against the construction of new nuclear power plants according to a ROMIR poll.
8.) Even under safe operating conditions, there is a rise of 2.5 times in the chances that children living near a nuclear power plant will become ill with leukaemia.
9.) According to the general city plan, St. Peterburg and its 5 million residents fall within the path of any prospective catastrophe at the Leningrad NPP.
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