Fears over CEECs’ nuclear strategies

Date: 19/03/1998

By Simon Coss

THE European Commission's nuclear safety programme for central and eastern Europe is preventing the closure of some of the regions' most dangerous reactors, warn green campaigners.

Environmental experts say that in several instances Commission funds, along with other finance from the international community to improve nuclear safety, are being used to upgrade rather than decommission installations which have been identified as potentially unsafe.

"In theory, there are a set of objectives which say the high-risk reactors are supposed to be shut down," explained Anthony Froggatt, an expert on the nuclear sector in the former Soviet bloc who has worked closely with environmental lobby group Greenpeace.

Froggatt points to the example of the Bohunice power plant in Slovakia as evidence of how reactors singled out for closure are being upgraded instead.

In 1994, the Slovak government agreed to shut the first of two reactors at the plant by the year 2000. But two years later, Bratislava signed a deal with a consortium, including German industrial conglomerate Siemens, to carry out a 250-million-ecu upgrade of the complex to be completed by 1999. The upgrade includes reactors previously identified as potentially dangerous.

"If the upgrade programme runs from 1996 to 1999, they are hardly going to close the plant a year later," said Froggatt.

Similar examples of apparently conflicting objectives can be seen at Lithuania's Ignalina reactor, an installation built to the same specifications as the infamous Chernobyl plant which exploded in 1986.

"The first unit was supposed to be closed in 1999 and unit two in 2002. However, it appears that initiatives are already under way significantly to increase the operating life of the reactors," said a report presented to the Coalition of Non-Nuclear Countries last month.

It also suggested that the reactor cores could be replaced, allowing their operating life to be significantly increased in breach of international agreements.

The report added that greatest concern surrounded proposals by Lithuania's ministry of economy to sign long-term electricity export contracts, "which would make the closure of Ignalina even less likely".

Over the next few years the EU's market in electricity will be progressively liberalised, allowing industries which use more than nine gigawatt-hours-per-year to buy their power from the most competitive supplier by 2003.

This development is likely to prove particularly interesting to countries able to produce relatively cheap electricity in nuclear power stations.

Producers in central and east European countries (CEECs) will also benefit from the fact that they are unlikely to be obliged to meet all of the Union's tough environmental laws when they first join the EU. The Commission estimates that bringing the applicants' environmental regulations up to Union standards would cost around 120 billion ecu.

This means, according to Froggatt, that the CEECs could soon be in a position to produce nuclear power at a lower cost than competitors in EU member states.

The main players in the Union's existing nuclear industry certainly seem to view the East as a land of opportunity.

Aside from Siemens' activities in the region, France's Framatome and Electricité de France (EDF) are currently involved in the construction of Slovakia's Mochovce reactors, and British Energy is participating in consultancy work on the privatisation of Ukraine's nuclear sector.

"By the end of this year or the beginning of next there will be no new reactors built in western Europe. This leaves two main markets: South East Asia and the central and eastern European countries," said Froggat, who added that the former was "out of the window" because of the financial crisis in the region.

"Western firms are now putting intense pressure on the Commission not to tie funding to closure agreements because they want the work," he added.

Hans van den Broek, the Commissioner responsible for relations with the CEECs, is due to present a report on the region's nuclear industry at the beginning of next month.