Learning nothing from Chernobyl
By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Ten years after the disaster at Chernobyl, the governments in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus have clearly learned little about the dangers of nuclear power. In Russia and Ukraine, plans provide for massive increases in nuclear-generated electricity output. Belarus is currently without nuclear power plants, but despite having suffered most of the devastation caused by the Chernobyl catastrophe, plans to begin a large reactor construction program.
These perspectives remain in force despite strong criticism of the main reactor design that is likely to be used in the expansion. The plans are based on highly questionable forecasts of future electricity consumption, and take little account of possibilities for energy conservation.
Russia currently has 25 nuclear power reactors, producing 12% of its electricity. Eleven of these are graphite-moderated RBMK installations of the Chernobyl type. Others are newer but scarcely less dangerous pressurised-water VVER 440-230 units. Most western experts argue that none of these reactors can be practically upgraded to meet modern safety standards.
At a conference in Vienna in September 1995, Russian atomic energy minister Viktor Sidorenko outlined Moscow's projections for electricity demand in coming decades and explained how the government planned to increase supply. From a 1994 figure of 938 billion kilowatt-hours, Sidorenko forecast, Russia's electricity use would grow to 1350-1400 kWh by 2010.
Although 70% of the increase could be met from coal and gas, the rest would have to come from nuclear energy, Sidorenko argued. That would mean a doubling of nuclear-generated electricity to 120 billion kWh annually by 2015. Minatom, the Russian Ministry of Nuclear Power, plans to build 10 new reactors by 2005.
Nuclear plants reportedly produced 37% of the electricity generated in Ukraine in 1995. Current plans call for this to rise to 60%. Ukraine's 15 nuclear power reactors include the two RBMK units currently operating at Chernobyl.
The government in Belarus intends to build as many as 10 reactors, the first to go on stream in 2005.
Most if not all of the new reactors in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are likely to be of the Soviet-designed VVER 1000/320 type. From 1985, this became the only standardised unit constructed in the USSR. In a 1992 study of VVER 1000 reactors, the International Atomic Energy Agency praised some aspects of the design, but identified numerous aspects which fell below international safety standards. The IAEA noted that VVER 1000 units suffered an average of five scrams (unplanned shutdowns) per year, compared to fewer than one with analogous western reactors.
Even if new installations allow older and more dangerous plants to be phased out, it is hard to see that the plans of the three governments amount to anything but a massive increase in the nuclear peril faced by the region. But is the prospect of more Chernobyls really something with which the people of the region are doomed to live?
In all three of these countries, the need for dramatically increased electricity output to meet demand in coming decades is accepted by the governments as gospel. But this reasoning is questionable, to say the least.
Sidorenko's figures foresee an increase in electricity demand in Russia of 44% over 14 years. Most of this rise, it seems, is supposed to result from increased investment and production in industry. But if Russia's productive economy is going to revive to this extent, the signs of such a recovery have yet to appear.
In any case, there is no essential reason why industry throughout the former USSR could not grow substantially, and living standards rise, without the overall demand for electricity increasing. Energy in these countries has traditionally been used very wastefully. Most estimates indicate that if equipment and practices used in western Europe today were employed in the former Soviet Union, energy savings of 30-50% would be attainable.
If the potential for expanding the use of safe and relatively clean energy sources is also taken into account, the prospects become perfectly real for meeting electricity demand while promptly shutting down the most dangerous nuclear plants.
In sum, the real need is not for additional nuclear generating capacity, but for efficient lighting, appliances and motors; proper insulation; better energy use accounting and management; and improved transmission systems. In areas such as north-west Russia, where nuclear plants currently provide the bulk of electricity needs, extra conventional capacity will have to be created.
A long tradition of artificially low energy prices has slowed the growth of energy conservation in the former USSR. But even in these countries, the gains to be made from using energy more efficiently are no secret. Why then has the implementing of these principles made so little progress?
The causes must be sought in the complexes of heavy industrial, military and bureaucratic interests that have survived with few changes from Soviet times, and which exert enormous influence. Privatisation of many of the organisations involved has made them more irresponsible, not less.
The chiefs of these organisations once built highly centralised technocratic empires as strongholds of bureaucratic power. Now they build industrial monopolies from motives of profit. Designing, manufacturing and marketing energy conservation equipment is unlikely ever to be as lucrative for these people as annexing the public purse in order to construct nuclear behemoths.
These absurdities of post-Soviet society cannot be ended through prayers to market forces, whose flip side in most cases is corporate self-interest. What is needed is genuine democratisation and a "greening" of mass consciousness.