Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

NUCLEAR

Soviet subs risk ‘slow Chernobyl’ in Norway

One of Norway's leading environmentalists has warned that derelict Soviet nuclear submarines close to the country's northern borders risk causing a "Chernobyl in slow motion".

Published: 17 February 2015 14:06 CET
Soviet subs risk 'slow Chernobyl' in Norway
The K-159 submarine before it sank during a failed attempt to move it in 2004. It is only a matter of years before nuclear waste starts to leak. Photo: Bellona Foundation
Nils Bøhmer, a nuclear physicist and chief executive of the Bellona Foundation, told Norway's Dagbladet newspaper that several ships and submarines deserted in the Barents and Kara Seas could start to leak radioactive waste within as little as ten years. 
 
“We fear what could be called a Chernobyl in slow motion, where radioactive waste seeps out into the sea.” he said.  “The Radiation Protection Authority has estimated that it may start to leak in 10 to 15 years time.” 
 
Bellona has been campaigning for action to deal with nuclear waste in neighbouring Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, in 1994 its report "Sources of Radioactive Contamination in Murmansk and Archangel Counties" alerted the world to the risks posted by decommissioned Soviet nuclear-powered submarines. 
 
However, the breakdown in relations between Russia and the West over the crisis in Ukraine has led Russia in December to effectively cancel  the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program, also known as Nunn-Lugar, under which it has worked with US Department of Defence personnel to try and keep the material safe.  
 
The Soviet Union dumped vast amounts of nuclear waste in the Barents and Kara Seas in the decades leading up to its dissolution in 1991. In total it abandoned: 19 ships containing radioactive waste; 14 with nuclear reactors, five of which contain spent nuclear fuel; 735 other pieces of radioactively contaminated heavy machinery;  17,000 containers with radioactive waste; and three nuclear submarines.
 
Of these, the three submarines pose the worst risk, with the Business Insider news site warning that K-27 could cause a Chernobyl-like event if the casings of its reactors fail and radiation leaks into the sea.  
 
The K-27 was an experimental design launched in 1962. While on duty in 1968, the reactor started leaking radiation, poisoning the crew. According to the BBC, nine seamen died of radiation poisoning immediately, while many more had their lives cut short.
 
The vessel was sunk in the Kara Sea in 1981 only 30 meters below sea level, far shallower than required by international guidelines. 

 
The greatest direct risk to Norway is posed by the K-159 submarine, which sank on a journey from the town of Ostrovnoy in Russia's Murmansk region in 2003, just 200km from the Norwegian border, giving it the potential to contaminate some of the country's most valuable fisheries. 
 
The wreck was mapped by sonar in 2010 by the British subsea surveyors Adus Deep Ocean under a now aborted project to salvage the vessel. 
 
Bøhmer says that the matter is urgent. ”I think we have a short time horizon to do something about this problem. Nuclear waste must be retrieved and stored on land where possible, or buried in the seabed before it is too late.”
 
 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

ENERGY

Why Germany’s nuclear exit is posing tough questions about its energy future

The Bavarian village of Gundremmingen is so proud of its nuclear power station that its coat of arms is graced with a giant golden atom.

Published: 5 March 2021 09:14 CET
Updated: 5 March 2021 10:31 CET
Why Germany's nuclear exit is posing tough questions about its energy future
Gundremmingen nuclear power plant. Photo: DPA

But change is coming to the village, with the plant facing imminent closure under Germany’s energy transition policy.

Former village mayor Wolfgang Mayer’s house has direct views of the imposing complex with its two 160-metre cooling towers — taller than the spires of Cologne Cathedral.

The plant still produces 10 billion kWh of power per year, though parts of it have already been shut down — enough to provide the entire Munich metropolitan region with electricity.

The power station will be decommissioned on December 31, 2021, along with two other facilities in northern Germany.

By the end of 2022, Germany will have achieved its goal of completely phasing out nuclear power, set by Chancellor Angela Merkel on May 30, 2011, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

SEE ALSO: Berlin agrees to compensate power firms for nuclear phase out

The plan represented a dramatic change of course by Merkel’s ruling conservatives, who just a few months earlier had agreed to extend the lifespan of Germany’s oldest power stations.

But it was met with widespread public support in a country with a powerful anti-nuclear movement, fuelled first by fears of a Cold War conflict and then by disasters such as Chernobyl.

Village church

In Gundremmingen, however, the decision has been a tough pill to swallow.

The nuclear power station has been “as much a part of the village as the church” and it feels as though “something is dying”, said Gerlinde Hutter, owner of a local guest house.

According to Meyer, it will take at least 50 years to remove all radioactive material from the site after the plant has been decommissioned.
The German government is still looking for a long-term storage site for the country’s residual nuclear waste.

Gundremmingen is not the only German village facing big changes as the country strives to implement its energy transition strategy.

Renewables have seen a spectacular rise since 2011 and in 2020 made up more than 50 percent of Germany’s energy mix for the first time, according to the Fraunhofer research institute — compared with less than 25 percent ten years ago.

The declining importance of nuclear power (12.5 percent in 2020) “has been compensated for by the expansion of renewable energies”, Claudia Kemfert, an energy expert at the DIW economic research institute, told AFP.

Nuclear power stations have therefore not been replaced by coal, though the fossil fuel does still represent almost a quarter of the electricity mix.

The gas dilemma

In fact, the phase-out of nuclear energy has been joined by another plan, announced in 2019, to close all of Germany’s coal-fired power stations by 2038.

This presents a particular challenge for Germany, which remains the world’s leading producer of lignite.

Mining for the brown coal, which is highly polluting, continues to lead to the destruction of villages in the west of the country in order to expand huge open-cast mines.

If Germany is to free itself from lignite, renewables such as wind, solar, biomass and hydropower will have to make up 65 percent of the energy mix by 2030.

Yet the country, which has long been at the forefront of wind energy in Europe, installed only 1.65 gigawatts (GW) of wind farms last year — the lowest level in a decade, according to the WindEurope advocacy group.

To meet the government’s targets, Germany would have to add 9.8 GW of solar and 5.9 GW of onshore wind annually, according to Kemfert.

But the development of new areas for wind or photovoltaic energy production is complex, with plans often coming up against resistance from local residents and the risk of damage to the landscape.

And unless storage and distribution can be improved via so-called virtual power plants, these new forms of energy do not have the same stability as thermal or nuclear power.

To secure its supply, Germany could therefore be tempted to build more gas-fired power stations.

But this would risk reinforcing its dependence on Russia, as illustrated by the controversy surrounding the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

A gas-fired power station is already in the works for the town of Leipheim, just around the corner from Gundremmingen.

SHOW COMMENTS