Was Chernobyl a cunning KGB conspiracy?

By Rein F. Deer

Date: 30/03/06

By the year 2020 Europe will be up to 75 % dependent on Russia for oil and gas. Imagine what a warm glow this prospect induces in the Kremlin.

Russia's bigshots can hardly believe their luck when they read that Old Europe does not dare to build more nuclear plants because it is scared of its electorates.

This all sounds too good not to be well considered. John le Carré should write a thriller about the young KGB lieutenant who in 1985 predicted that Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost would lead to "the worst accident of the century", the collapse of Soviet power in Europe. Did Moscow's dirty tricks department then find a devilishly clever way of scaring the hell out of West Europeans, and bully us out of building new nuclear plants? Was Chernobyl really just the usual Soviet sloppiness? One thing is certain. Twenty years on, the no-longer-so-young KGB spook Vladimir Putin is in charge, and Mother Russia has her iron thumb on Europe's power supplies. Nations on the western side of the River Elbe have always been servile to Russia, and cowed on the eastern side. Now three Baltic countries and Poland are building new nuclear plants to replace Lithuania's Soviet-type Ignalina plant, which contains the two largest operating reactors in the world.

This project is a fitting response to the insult of the German-Russian gas pipeline, and a renewed assertion of freedom and independence. There are some paradoxes about nuclear energy and Europe. For example, in order to become a member of the EU, Bulgaria must shut down its Kozloduy nuclear power plant. But any Bulgarian government wishing to survive will have to re-open it as soon as the country is safely in the EU. Sweden will keep her dozen plants working for at least another 40 years. Finland is already building a fifth plant and intends to start work on a sixth. Regardless of global warming, Nordic winters remain as cold as ever.

Germany was for years the political hostage of the Greens, and the German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel is still psychologically a hostage to environmental extremists. He took great umbrage at the cautious reference in the Commission's energy paper to including nuclear in the European energy mix. Once upon a time, the joke went that going to the Russian hell was the best option because the heating would not work. This is no longer a safe bet. Russia herself has no complexes about nuclear energy. Indeed, much of her oil wealth is wisely being invested in the latest nuclear technology. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other new European leaders face a choice between a new dependency on Russia, chilly nights, or shedding some of the Green superstitions about nuclear energy.

Comment feature on Europe's energy dependence on Russia and the discussions about nuclear energy as an alternative.