Nuclear plants are ticking time bombs

Date: 27/06/1996

By Thomas Klau

NUCLEAR safety is one of the EU's major concerns in its relationship with membership candidates and other partner countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

Union governments have demonstrated their commitment to tackling the problem by pouring large sums of money into projects designed to reduce the risk from suspect plants.

Through a variety of multilateral institutions, such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London, and assistance programmes such as Phare and Tacis, the Union has channelled hundreds of millions of ecu into improving the safety of the former Soviet bloc countries' antiquated nuclear power plants.

Between 1990 and 1995, the Union spent 127 million ecu on its Phare nuclear safety programme, directed towards its Central and Eastern partners, and spent another 388 million ecu on improving nuclear safety at plants in the republics of the former Soviet Union.

Yet the media attention focused on the infamous Chernobyl plant in Ukraine - responsible for the worst nuclear accident in history in 1986 - has tended to obscure the fact that a number of equally threatening reactors continue to operate in several enlargement candidate countries, with Bohunice in Slovakia, Kozloduy in Bulgaria and Ignalina in Lithunia considered the most unsafe.

Critics say that the Union's original insistence on the swift closure of the most threatening plants - echoing a string of declarations adopted by the G7 group, which took the lead on this issue at its summit meeting in Paris in June 1989 - is being quietly abandoned in favour of a less radical approach.

With many Central and Eastern European countries insisting they could not do without the additional energy supply provided by their ageing nuclear plants, the Union, these critics maintain, has gradually moved along with other western donors towards a policy of funding the temporary rehabilitation of existing power stations.

It has done so, they say, even though this could result in these plants - albeit made slightly less dangerous - continuing to operate beyond the closing dates originally planned for them.

Yet the risks involved in such a strategy are considerable, as a strongly-worded report from the US department of energy, quoted in a recent Greenpeace analysis, makes clear.

While the conditions at Chernobyl are being termed in the 1995 report as “in many ways worse than those that existed prior to the disastrous 1986 accident”, the operation in Kozloduy is described as a “high-stakes gamble”, as “six out of seven leading accident indicators are below average”.

Meanwhile, the Lithuanian plant of Ignalina is said to be lacking strict regulatory oversight, adequate funds and a plant design geared towards minimising disaster risks.

Although EU officials insist that working towards maximum nuclear safety in Central and Eastern Europe remains the Union's priority - while acknowledging that some governments have not been as cooperative as had been initially hoped - critics point out that until now, only two high-risk reactors, one in Chernobyl and one in Armenia, have been permanently closed down.

For many critics, this amounts to an alarming failure of the Union's nuclear strategy.

Echoing the advice of most experts, western governments originally pressed for a rapid shut down of REMK and VVER reactors, which are generally regarded to pose the highest risk.

Yet critics from Greenpeace and other ecological pressure groups claim that they have spotted signs that governments are gradually shifting away from their initial stance, and say there are indications that reactors initially targeted for swift closure might well be rehabilitated for a prolonged period of use.

One example they give is the Slovak reactor of Bohunice, which is to be 'backfitted' with an investment programme of over 60 million ecu, to be completed by 1999.

The decision to go ahead with this investment programme was taken despite the fact that the reactor is officially earmarked for closure in 2000.