INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom this week closed the door for further cooperation with Norway, ending nearly three decades of
icebreakers and power plants.Rosatom representatives on Tuesday announced that Norway is no longer welcome to participate in projects that
were until recently financed by Oslo.Norway froze all financing to nuclear safety projects agreed under a joint commission between the two
and its western neighbor share a coastline on the Barents Sea and have a common interest in avoiding radioactive leakage into the marine
environment.Some of the largest run-down dump sites for radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel from Soviet-era submarines are stored some
Director Per Strand.The two countries have an agreement to notify each other in case of accidents that could lead to cross-border
radioactive contamination
Russia, though, has never informed Norway about any accidents involving military reactor installations, such as the deadly July 2019 fire on
nuclear-powered weapons system exploded in the White Sea later the same year, killing five Rosatom experts and sending a cloud of
radioactive gas over the city of Severodvinsk.The Norwegian delegation expressed deep worries over safety at Ukrainian nuclear power plants
after Russia launched the war on Feb
24 and started firing at buildings of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant while reactors were in operation.The spent nuclear fuel storage
in Andreeva Bay is one location where the doors are now closed for Norwegians
The storage site across the bay from the submarine base in Zapadnaya Litsa still holds some 10,000 spent nuclear fuel elements stored in
The following five-year period saw a removal of the non-problematic fuel elements, first by ship to Murmansk and then by train to a
reprocessing plant in Mayak near Chelyabinsk
fear accidents could happen during lifting and re-packing into new containers.While exchange of information was discussed at the Commission
meeting, no details on how progress will be followed up were given.Naturvernforbundet (Friends of the Earth Norway) is an organization that
has followed nuclear safety work in Russia in cooperation with local non-governmental groups for years
attention to the urgency of nuclear safety in the north in the 1990s, these groups have few options to maintain a watchdog position in
escalated in recent years
home causing fear, hopelessness and silence
Petersburg, Naturvernforbundet had published several studies over the years on how older nuclear power plants can be safely decommissioned
article has been adapted from its original version published by The Barents Observer.
