The Revival of Nuclear Power in Eastern Europe

David Marples

Almost 25 years after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine contaminated a large swathe of territory across Europe, several Eastern European countries are embarking on new and ambitious plans to construct new nuclear power plants. Ostensibly, the main reason for the development is a desire to end dependence on Russian oil and gas, supplies of which have been cut off periodically to Ukraine and Belarus in particular.

The new programs are costly and controversial, and although there is far more emphasis on safety than in the late Soviet period, a huge build-up of capacity in particular regions has residents fearful of the impact of an accident.

Ukraine currently has 15 reactors, which provide about 50% of its electricity. After the closure of Chernobyl in 2000, emphasis switched to the completion of new reactors—Khmelnytsky-2 and Rivne-4—in western Ukraine, though the largest nuclear plant in Europe is Enerhodar, near Zaporizhzhya on the Dnipro River, which has 6 Russian-manufactured water-pressured reactors (VVER), each of 1,000 megawatts (MW) capacity.

Three years ago, the Ukrainian government approved plans for the construction of twenty new reactors by 2030, including 11 new units and 9 to replace existing ones. The first two units to come on line will be Khmelnytsky 3 and 4 units by 2017, construction on which was halted when Ukraine imposed a moratorium on building new reactors in 1990. About 85% of the financing for these new units will come from a Russian loan.

At the same time, with the aid of the European Bank and a large donation from the European Commission, the International Chernobyl Shelter Fund is to construct a new cover for the destroyed fourth reactor at Chernobyl at a cost of around US$1 billion.

To the north, Belarus has also announced plans to build its first nuclear power plant, commencing with two Russian-made VVER-1000 reactors, which are anticipated to come into service in 2016 and 2018 respectively. President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has approved the plan, and the site selected is in Hrodna region, close to the border with Lithuania.

Lukashenka has angrily criticized Russia for raising the prices of imported gas and for its plans to build a transmission pipeline through the Baltic States, thereby depriving both Ukraine and Belarus of profits on gas supplied to Central and Western Europe.

The location of the Belarusian construction has raised concerns in Lithuania, as it is dangerously close to the capital Vilnius. However, Lithuania has similar problems. When it joined the European Union in 2004, it agreed to close its Ignalina station (two graphite-moderated 1,500 MW reactors) by the end of 2009. Ignalina has supplied electricity to several countries, including Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad region. Lithuania is now commissioning bids from European Union investors for a replacement station in the same location.

In 2008, Russia’s nuclear energy authority—Rosatom—revealed a new program to build a 1200 MW plant near Sovetsk in the Kaliningrad enclave by 2016. Once again the construction would be very close to Lithuania, this time to its northern border. Residents of Kaliningrad have questioned the need for the plant and a survey reveals that 26% oppose it and a further 43% are concerned about its safety.

Poland has long relied on its coal industry to supply its energy needs and abandoned plans to build a station at Zarnowiec in the 1980s. However, the Polish government energy industry has long focused on lignite coal, which poses an environmental hazard. Thus Warsaw has also announced plans to construct two nuclear reactors by 2020, with the abandoned Zarnowiec site discussed as a possible location.

The recovery of nuclear power in the area most affected by the world’s worst nuclear disaster is remarkable. Either these governments are seeking more economic independence or else they regard the atomic option as the least ecologically hazardous of energy industries.

However, the potential problems are huge. Other than Russia, none of the states has adequate storage sites for radioactive waste. Most lack domestic technology and expertise. Only Russia and Ukraine possess adequate supplies of uranium; and only Russia of the expanding countries manufactures nuclear reactors.

The biggest problem of all is lack of funding. Whereas Lithuania can anticipate financial support from the EU for its replacement station, Ukraine and Belarus must seek investment elsewhere. Paradoxically, they are reliant primarily on Russian loans and technology to develop an industry intended to reduce dependence on their troublesome neighbor.

Finally, some 7 million people inhabiting this part of Europe are living on lands affected by radiation from Chernobyl. The accident continues to raise health concerns and long-living radio-nuclides remain in the soil. Yet a massive nuclear energy expansion program is in place. It is reminiscent of the Soviet plans of the 1970s and 1980s, and equally unrealistic.

(First published in the EDMONTON JOURNAL, 13 October 2009)

Re-examining the Nazi-Soviet Pact 70 Years On

David Marples

August 23 marks the 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a nonaggression treaty between the two totalitarian powers of USSR and Nazi-Germany, as well as a secret protocol that divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence between Hitler and Stalin.

In May 2009, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev authorized a commission to investigate cases of historical revisionism of the Second World War to the detriment of Russia. The move followed the approval a year ago of new school textbooks in Russia that reassessed the role of Stalin, acknowledging that he made some errors but noting in turn his achievements and successes, particularly in the war years. Taken together they symbolize the new Russian policy of identifying contemporary Russia with the former Soviet regime.

Last month, Russia responded furiously to a proposal by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to declare the date August 23 one of commemoration of the victims of Fascism and Communism. In Moscow’s view, it is not possible to equate the evils of Nazism with Stalin’s regime.

A recent article in Vesti Nedeli by Il’ya Kanavin (June 21) also focused on the Pact, citing historian Natalya Narochnitskaya’s view that by the terms of the Pact, the USSR was only regaining territories that were formerly part of the Russian Empire. Citing this same author, Kanavin maintains that Stalin was obliged to make a deal with Hitler for the following reasons.

First, it was essential to keep the German army as far from the Soviet border as possible as the USSR was at war with Imperial Japan in the Far East and could not be fighting on two fronts simultaneously.

Second, Germany and Poland to that point were in close collusion and could even be termed allies, based on the agreement of 1934, that contained secret clauses on mutual military aid. He emphasizes that such secret protocols were a staple of treaties in this period.

Third, with the removal of some 38,000 Soviet officers during the Purges, Stalin needed time to train new military leaders and produce more arms.

Fourth, Stalin was isolated because the only potential allies, Britain and France, had no intention of reaching an agreement with the USSR. A year earlier the two democratic countries had participated in the notorious Munich agreement that led to the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia through the policy of appeasement. Only Churchill opposed Hitler but world leaders were allegedly more afraid of Stalin than the German dictator.

Lastly, Kanavin maintains that the Soviet Union should not take be blamed for permitting Hitler a free hand in his assigned sector of Poland. Stalin then had little choice but to sign the agreement, in full knowledge that he was only postponing the conflict.

These arguments can be questioned on a number of grounds, and not least because they distinguish between a rapacious Hitler regime and a defensive-minded and implicitly benign Stalin government that eventually would bear the brunt of the war.

The comment that Stalin was occupying only territories formerly under the Russian Empire is inaccurate. In the summer of 1940, for example, after forcing the Romanians out of Bessarabia, Stalin also occupied northern Bukovina (today it is the Chernovtsy Oblast of Ukraine) that had never been under Russian rule. When Molotov visited Germany late in 1940 he made several more territorial demands that reportedly led Hitler to accelerate plans for the invasion of the USSR.

Eastern Poland’s Volhynia region was part of the Russian Empire but Eastern Galicia had only been under Russian rule briefly during the First World War. It is hard to perceive acquisition of these territories as anything other than the westward expansion of the USSR.

But it is the assault on the annexed population that belies the arguments of Kanavin and Narochnitskaya, and particularly because there are several instances of collaboration between the two occupying powers. Both systematically eradicated the Polish population—the Nazis overtly and the Soviets through deportations and secret executions in forests such as Katyn. More than 15,000 Polish officers were executed.

Stalin, however, claimed to be liberating subject populations—Ukrainians and Belarusians—who wished to join the USSR. The Soviet advance only took place 16 days after the German invasion of Western Poland. In this way the Russian side did little fighting—only in Grodno did the Poles offer much resistance—and was able to pose as a friendly power.

However, having eliminated all vestiges of Polish rule, the new government organized mass deportations of Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Jews in 1940 and 1941. A similar policy was deployed after the USSR occupied the three Baltic States in the summer of 1940.

President Medvedev and Russian historians have to face a few home truths. Even Kanavin concedes that the mass execution of Red Army officers weakened the Soviet military. But this action was part of the Terror that the Stalin regime applied both domestically and in newly conquered territories, committing mass murders on an epic scale. Today, the Baltic States consider the entire period 1940-90 to have been one of Soviet occupation. That is why their citizens initially welcomed the Germans in the summer of 1941. Large sectors of Western Ukraine remain alienated from Moscow today for the same reason.

By the agreement of August 23, 1939, two dictators acted in Machiavellian fashion. It is facile to suggest that Stalin should be regarded differently because he emerged as a victorious war leader responsible for the defeat of Fascism. His naïve trust in Hitler, manifested by the Treaty, also was responsible for the Soviet failure to respond in the first days of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ leading to the mass loss of territory and capture of millions of Soviet citizens.

August 23 was a dark day for Russia, as it was for the rest of Europe and that is how it should be remembered.

[This article first appeared in the Moscow Times, August 20, 2009]

Dear Women!

The Ukrainian media celebrates International Women’s Day.

By Ilya Khineyko

According to Aurora website the International Women’s Day (IWD) is “the global day connecting all women around the world and inspiring them to achieve their full potential.” Similarly, the Status of Women Canada website describes the IWD as providing “an opportunity to celebrate the progress made to advance women’s rights and to assess the challenges that remain.” Ukraine, along with a number of ex-USSR republics and a few post-socialist countries such as Macedonia and Vietnam, celebrates the Women’s Day on a state level, as an official statutory holiday. In the USSR, the IWD was introduced in 1921 in commemoration of a female workers’ strike that allegedly sparked the February Revolution of 1917. It became a statutory holiday in 1966, and the celebrations would typically include hailing the achievements of Soviet women with newspapers featuring interviews with a female tractor driver or a dairy farm worker.