Regular readers of Nuclear Reaction may remember the campaign in Slovakia to have the law changed so that the country’s local communities can have a say on uranium mining projects in their areas.

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The campaign was started three years ago by a coalition of groups which included Greenpeace. In Slovakia, any petition gaining 100,000 signatures must be discussed by the country’s parliament. The coalition’s petition gained 113,000 and it was delivered to the parliament in September last year.

This week the campaign was victorious when, in a momentous decision, the Slovak parliament agreed on legal changes to geological and mining laws to give more power and control to local communities, municipal and regional authorities. This will allow them stop or limit geological research of uranium deposits and to stop proposed uranium mining.

This is a huge achievement for the Slovak environmental movement and should be an inspiration for groups around the world. For the first time in Slovak history non-governmental organisations were able to collect over 100,000 signatures, have an environmental issue submitted to the Slovak parliament by a petition, and to achieve a change in the law by a petition.

This does not mean a complete ban on uranium mining in Slovakia but gives significant powers to local and regional authorities in the mining permission process. All 41 municipal authorities facing proposed uranium mining projects in their territories have already declared their opposition. There’s an excellent chance that Slovakia’s uranium will never see the light of day.

Posted by Justin at 1:16 PM | Permalink

Nuclear lobbyist all around the world keep on feeding us the most ridiculous lies in order to promote their dirty technology and dying industry. Anyone conscious can only laugh bitterly when they claim that nuclear energy is clean, cheap and safe.

In Slovakia, a strongly pro-nuclear (and - no wonder - anti-renewables) country, the lobby supported by the current government keeps going on about home-grown experts, whose knowledge can (one day) be exported to other countries. Our Prime Minister Fico likes to offer their help all around the world, whether it’s to Italy or pretty much anybody he meets at high level meetings.

I always wondered what kind of experts they kept talking about, as there is not that much to be proud of even though nuclear power has a long history in this region. The first reactor’s construction began in 1958 and several accidents happened in the 70s when, after a core meltdown in 1977, the first Slovak reactor had to be shut down. The consequences of this accident are still threatening the surrounding environment and public health. As if that wasn’t enough, there was another accident in 1999, when our experts were trying to take the fuel out of the broken reactor. A decommissioning process has only reached a first milestone (out of five), while already costing some 1,218 million euros. The estimated completion date of the decommissioning process is 2033.

I can´t help but wondering how many accidents have to happen in one country for the public and decision makers to stop blindly supporting this madness?

Continue reading "How safe are Slovak reactors?" »

Posted by Justin at 11:34 AM | Permalink

Slovakia is a country that claims some of the highest popularity for its nuclear power plants in Europe. That‘s certainly true among its political leaders, who are such dedicated fans of nuclear reactors that they are ready to break European legislation by providing illegal state subsidies to nuclear sector, ready to violate the EU accession treaty by contemplating restarting high risk reactors, and ready to put pressure on utilities to go ahead with economically non-viable projects in Mochovce and Bohunice.

Sad to say, some of the Slovak media – instead of doing investigative work and allowing open debate – are trying to keep these controversies away from the public, thus helping to maintain an uninformed nuclear consent. Well, we do not have proof of corruption or evidence of a political link there, but two stories that I have just observed on Slovak public television give us a certain indication.

Two weeks ago, when Greenpeace delivered a massively popular petition against uranium mining to the Slovak parliament, national TV was planning to have an evening live debate with us on this hot issue. Surprisingly, its editors did not manage to find anyone in the country to defend those outrageous plans, as its proponents do not dare to speak out at the moment. So, referring to the need to be object and to have a balanced debate, the TV bosses decided rather to cancel the debate.

Last week, when another live debate was organized about nuclear power in the country, the principles of balance and objectivity were suddenly forgotten. This is how I ended up in a studio facing four leading nuclear proponents in a 90 minutes live talk: Lubomir Jahnatek (economy minister), Tibor Mikuš (president of Slovak Nuclear Forum), Vladimír Slugeň (chair of Slovak Nuclear Society), and Miroslav Lipár (Slovak delegate to International Atomic Energy Agency). The debate’s moderator turned out to be an even more passionate proponent – no wonder, he worked as an editor on a book celebrating history of Slovak nuclear programme.

Continue reading "The state of debate in Slovakia‘s nuclear paradise" »

Posted by Justin at 2:17 PM | Permalink

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This week saw Greenpeace deliver a petition with 113,488 signatures calling for the Slovak parliament to change laws regarding uranium mining in the country. Under the Slovakian constitution, any petition having more than 100,000 signatories must be discussed by the country’s parliament.

The petition is seeking a change in the law allowing municipalities to have a say on uranium mining in their areas. As all the towns and cities near potential mining sites are against the idea, this could mean very little or no uranium mining being done in Slovakia.

The campaign was launched three years ago, in order to stop a project aggressively pushed by the Canadian-based company Tournigan. It planned to open two uranium mines: one located just six kilometres upstream from Košice, the second largest city in Slovakia with a population of 250,000 people; the other at the border of the stunning UNESCO national park, ’Slovak Paradise‘. A coalition of groups lead by Greenpeace mobilized dozens of towns and local councils, regional governments, and over 100,000 citizens to express their refusal to turn Slovak Paradise into a contaminated and devastated landscape.

A briefing about the campaign prepared in January 2007 is available here. The only information to have changed is the huge rise in support for the campaign and the fact that a legal intervention from Tournigan closed the tournigan.info website (so much for industry transparency).

The authorities are now counting the signatures. We’ll keep you updated on how things progress.

(More information in Slovak is available on the Greenpeace Slovakia website)

Posted by Justin at 12:03 PM | Permalink

Remember last week and the nuclear industry plot in Slovakia to manipulate the public consultations on the Environmental Impact Assessment for the Mochovce reactor (‘Reach the lowest possible media & public attention’ and ‘Prevent public hearing in Vienna’)? Greenpeace EU policy campaigner on dirty energy, Jan Haverkamp, asked Paolo Ruzzini, CEO of Slovenské elektrárne, 15 very specific questions about the scandal. Make your own mind up as to whether Mr Ruzzini's answers were satisfactory...

Posted by Justin at 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Aslihan Tumer , Nuclear campaigner at Greenpeace International

The Mochovce plant is a nuclear dog whose owners like very dirty tricks.

It seems that the Nukes industry has been up to its old tricks in trying to prevent any sort of transparent public process. In this case “seeing it” is definitely “believing it”.

Some kind soul leaked our colleagues in Slovakia a power point presentation which outlines the dastardly plans of the Slovak electric utility, whose majority owners are Italian company ENEL, for the up and coming environmental impact assessment of Mochvoce - their nuclear reactor. [Check out an example from their Powerpoint presentation below.]

They have so little confidence in their “clean & safe” reactor that they came up with this lovely plan to do as much as possible to manipulate the public hearings in order to make sure things go well for them.

They want to:
• prevent any protests in the area by organizing their own demonstrations
• restrict the participation of the public in a “public” hearing
• reach the lowest possible media and public attention
• prevent a legally required hearing in the neighbouring country of Austria

So another nuclear utility bites the 'transparency dust'. ENEL has always presented itself as a champion in transparency. With this document it shows it is willing to use communist era manipulation to avoid public scrutiny. And with reason: the Mochovce project sports two 1970s Russian designed nuclear reactors that are not even equipped with secondary containment. No wonder they don’t want anyone finding out.

[For more on Greenpeace's nuclear campaign - follow Aslihan on Twitter!]

Update: The Powerpoint presentation is now available here.

Update 22/09: Greenpeace asked Paolo Ruzzini, CEO of Slovenské elektrárne, 15 questions about the preparation of the public hearing for the Environmental Impact Assessment of the Mochovce 3,4 nuclear reactor project. Here's his answer.

Posted by Laura at 3:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)