Belarus’ atomic future

In a few days, the world will commemorate the 27th anniversary of the nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl station in Ukraine.

After some frenetic negotiations, principally between Ukraine and the IAEA, the plant shut down permanently in the year 2000. Belarus suffered disproportionately from the radiation fallout. About 80% of the republic received high levels of radioactive iodine, and about a fifth of the country—mostly the southern regions of Homiel and Mahileu—were contaminated with cesium and strontium, with half-lives of approximately three decades.

Since the disaster, April 26 has been commemorated more by the opposition than the authorities. The Chernobyl Way march might have lost some significance over the years. Moreover, the government has been practically triumphant about its success in “overcoming the consequences of the disaster.” The president has frequently visited the contaminated areas on Chernobyl anniversaries, stressing that the affected lands are now suitable for cultivating crops. In reality many families in the rural regions (well known for the production of flax) have been living off the land since the accident occurred.

This year the Chernobyl march will take on enhanced significance given that construction work has started on Belarus’ own nuclear plant on the border with Lithuania at Astraviec, in Hrodna region. Belarus has been assuring the Lithuanians that they have no cause for concern, that attention has been paid to environmental concerns, and that the plant has modern technology that was applied to the Fukushina station after the accident caused by the tsunami in March 2011. After the Japanese disaster, Belarus offered its aid, augmented by the many years of experience with dealing with Chernobyl.

The republic was not part of the original Soviet nuclear program. The only initiative was a half-finished nuclear power and heating station toward the end of the Soviet period that fell victim to the wave of anti-nuclear protests in the late 1980s, along with many other projects. After Fukushima, as after Chernobyl, several states began to question their commitment to nuclear energy. Germany abandoned it entirely. Russia by contrast started anew, with ambitious export-oriented programs that include the construction of a new “Baltic” station in the Kaliningrad region.

The Belarus project has begun as an almost exclusively Russian development. Russia will provide funding, technology, fuel, and most of the plant’s engineers.  The AES-2006 design is also being used to construct the latest version of the Leningrad station (originally the first graphite-moderated RBMK model in the USSR) as well as the Baltic plant.  The reactor-pressure vessels and other components for the Belarus plant are being manufactured in Volgodonsk by Russia’s Atomenergomash. In addition to Belarus, the other example of the design being deployed at Astraviec is the nuclear power station in Taiwan.

In theory, the construction of the station will allow Belarus to offset some of its energy dependence on Russia once it comes on line around 2017 and 2018—the second reactor is expected to be in service by 2020. Yet there are several causes for serious concern, in addition to the obvious ones of cost overruns and the issue of Belarus falling even deeper into debt to Russia for its construction.

The first is the new build-up of nuclear reactors in a constricted region. In addition to the Baltic and Belarusian stations, new nuclear plants are at the planning stage in Lithuania (a successor to the Ignalina station, an RBMK-1500 building on the Belarusian border), and Poland. Not since the late 1970s has there been such a build-up of nuclear stations in central Europe. And Belarus is at the epicenter of the nuclear energy revival.

The second is an obvious but understated question of late. Are the consequences of Chernobyl really behind us? Can we safely say that there will be no more medical victims, or people affected by the accident?

In a scientific paper presented—perhaps ironically given what was to follow in that country—in Nagasaki, Japan, Pavel Bespalchuk of the Belarusian State Medicial University Yuri E. Demidchik of the Minsk Thyroid Center, and seven other scholars noted that there were more than 12,000 cases of thyroid gland cancer in Belarus during the first twenty years after Chernobyl. Initially prevalent among children, which linked the disease directly to the nuclear accident, its most recent manifestation is in the age group of 46 and older, where malignant cancers have had an impact in five of the six regions of Belarus. The paper suggests that the issue of thyroid cancer among “Chernobyl children” is over, but the disease is now presenting a problem among an older age group.

Perhaps of even more immediate concern for Belarusians are the precautions being taken for a major accident. We saw at both Chernobyl and Fukushima that evacuations actually worsened the problems by moving people to areas with even higher radiation than in their original locations. And in Belarus one has the added problem of lands still contaminated from Chernobyl. These issues should be of concern not only to those taking part in the Chernobyl Way demonstration next Friday, but also to all residents of Belarus. There have been no referendums on the issue of nuclear energy in the republic. The new station has been sanctioned with little public discussion. Comparisons with the Soviet era decision-making are only too apt.

David Marples, for charter97.org