Supporting the Anti-Nuclear Movement in Russia
One of the focal points of our program has been the support of local NGOs in Russia, where the government aims to build 40 new nuclear plants. Grassroots has supported over 20 projects in Russia over the past 8 years, ranging from action camps against individual NPPs to national campaigns against the import of nuclear waste.
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| Protest action in Ekaterinburg. |
Cooperation of russian and german antinuclear movements.
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One of the highlights in this area is the URENCO campaign. Since 1996, the Russian nuclear industry and the European company URENCO has been transporting radioactive waste from the uranium enrichment plant in Gronau (Germany) to closed nuclear cities in Siberia. Only 10% of the uranium is re-enriched in Russia and then returned to URENCO. Although Russian law forbids the import of radioactive waste, 90% of URENCO’s waste stays in the country and all information is kept secret because Russian enrichment plants are part of the governmental weapons industry.
Our partner, Ecodefense, made the radwaste trade from Germany public in 2005 for the first time and organized actions along the transport routes ranging from St. Petersburg to Ekaterinburg. The story caught the attention of the media and around 20 million Russians found out about this dirty business. In 2006, Ecodefense continued to organize protests in various cities across Russia, and also started cooperation with the German anti-nuclear movement. The last transportation of radioactive waste from Gronau was protested on both sides – in Western Germany and in Russia. Ecodefense also appealed to several regional prosecutors in Russia to halt these illegal nuclear activities. This provoked an investigation by the regional prosecutor office in Ekaterinburg – which is still ongoing. Another result of the protests, was that the head of the St. Petersburg regional parliament demanded to stop using the city’s sea-port as a transit place for radioactive waste. In June 2006, governmental news agency RIA NOVOSTI published news that Rosatom (the governmental nuclear power agency) may re-think the policy of importing uranium tails.
Chernobyl + 20
In 2006, grassroots provided grants to NGOs in Romania, Bulgaria, Russia and the Ukraine to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe.
In Bulgaria, members of the BeleNE! antinuclear coalition organized a debate tour in key university towns and held a vigil in front of the Ministry of Economy and Energy, which is in charge of nuclear policy. The vigil began at 1:23 a.m. on April 26th (the exact time of the explosion).
“We were a group of about 20 people dressed in protective white costumes with posters, slogans and photos of the victims of Chernobyl. On the little square in front of the ministry we made a sign of radioactive waste, using sand and black fabric. Jan Haverkamp from Greenpeace told the story of the explosion from around 1 a.m. till 1:23 when the lightening of the candles began. The media was there at 1 a.m. – Bulgarian National TV, BTV and photo-reporters.
At 8 a.m. we started to meet the ministry employees who were coming to work and gave them leaflets about Chernobyl and the Bulgarian energy policy. We had the chance to meet minister Rumen Ovcharov and asked him about the situation regarding the incident on March 1st, 2006 in Bulgaria’s NPP Koszloduy”.
In the Ukraine, the NGO “Ecoclub” organized an energy tour throughout the country, calling for a new sustainable energy policy and a stop to nuclear power. The tour covered 1800 km in 8 days and held press conferences and public exhibitions along its route. As a result, the new version of the national energy-strategy of the Ukraine envisages that 20% of the energy demand shall be covered by renewable sources. The previous version earmarked only 8%.
In Russia, a broad NGO coalition organized over 2000 events throughout the country, holding seminars, protest actions, vigils and press conferences in all major cities. Over 150 articles appeared in newspapers and magazines and over 70 radio- and TV-reports. According to our estimation, nearly 10 million people received the distributed information.
Stopping the Construction of new NPPs in Eastern Europe
One of the key efforts that grassroots supported over the past years, was an international campaign against the Belene nuclear power plant (NPP) in Bulgaria. Belene is not only the first of the new NPPs in Eastern Europe to apply for financing, it is also one of the most dangerous projects, as it would be built in an area of high seismic risk.
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Vienna. On Friday, the 13th of October 2006,
protest actions took place in 16 European
capitals against the UniCredit bank. |
The focus of the protests was Eastern Europe.
Students demonstrate against Belene in Tuzla.
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Grassroots therefore awarded several small grants to Bulgarian NGOs, working both in the Belene region as well as on the national level. When it emerged in 2006, that German and Italian banks were planning to fund Belene, grassroots also supported campaigns by NGOs in these countries to take their banks to task. This enabled the German NGO, urgewald, to bring activists from Bulgaria to the shareholder meetings of Deutsche Bank, HypoVereinsbank and Commerzbank and to mobilize over 10,000 protest postcards from concerned citizens to the banks. In October 2006, the Italian bank, UniCredit was then targeted in a Europe-wide action day, with protests in 13 countries in front of its offices. At the same time, groups in Germany were gearing up to a nation-wide action week with protests in 60 cities against the Belene project. On October 19th 2006, the banks caved in – and withdrew from the project!
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Albena Simeonova, one of Bulgaria's leading
environmentalists, speaks out against Belene
at the shareholder meeting of Deutsche Bank.
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The Belene campaign thus sent important signals to Western banks – that citizens and customers do not want to see new NPPs constructed in Europe. There is however, another important source of funding for nuclear power in Europe and that is the Euratom Facility.
Euratom Campaign
Euratom, the European Nuclear Power Association, was founded 50 years ago with the goal "to create the conditions for the development of a powerful nuclear power industry" (preamble of the EURATOM Treaty). Despite widespread criticism, this institution has proved immune to all efforts at reform and calls for its dissolution. When Euratom created its own credit line (1977) and first began to fund nuclear power projects in certain Eastern European states (1994), it became a potent financier of the nuclear industry in this region. Grassroots has therefore devoted a significant part of its resources in financing background briefings, coordination of strategy meetings as well as political campaigns and lobby work on Euratom. The results were:
- planned EU funding in the order of 2 billion Euro designated for the Euratom credit line was averted;
- expansion of the geographical focus of the Euratom credit line to include countries such as China was stopped;
- the Euratom contract was not, as some EU members had required, adopted in the EU constitutional draft;
- several member countries called for the organization of a conference of all ratifying states in order to decide on the future of Euratom;
Resume:
Currently, conditions for the nuclear power sector are changing. Large energy companies are trying to use the climate discussion to renounce the nuclear phase-out in Germany. Finland and France have decided to build new nuclear power plants. Big companies like ENEL have signed cooperation agreements with the Russian nuclear industry. And the pro-nuclear lobby is managing to put NPPs back onto official agendas in Slovakia, Romania, Lithuania, Bulgaria and many other Eastern European countries. The first of these projects, Belene and Mochovce 3 and 4, are currently being examined by the EU-Commission and if it comes to a positive assessment, they would be eligible for loans from Euratom. At the same time western banks are being approached to provide financial support for new NPPs.
Thus, the need for a consistent and concerted effort by the international anti-nuclear power movement and the foundations who support it is apparent – possibly more so than ever before.