Gennady Voskresensky

«The year of 2002 marks the tenth anniversary of the U.N. Conference on Environment (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), which adopted basic documents formulating the «Program of Actions for the XXI Century» to ensure a steady development in the interests of the present and future generations. The principle of a steady development implies the inadmissibility of unlimited use of the natural environment, prevention of its unchecked pollution, provision of ecological security for human beings and the biosphere». This was the preamble that the Nuclear Society of Russia started its XIII annual conference with in Moscow in June.

    Ecological security, man-caused risks and steadiness of development were exactly the questions that the Nuclear Society of Russia (NSR) decided to discuss this time around at its regular conference. The choice was only natural because Russian atomic scientists are worried by the public’s negative attitude towards anything connected with the development of the nuclear power industry. As one of its participants said, it is necessary «to raise the level of informing people about nuclear technologies since they get data mainly from mass media, which often spread distorted and false information».
But it was the first time that the subject of ecology traditionally discussed at every NSR conference was considered in global terms. As executive vice president of NSR Sergei Kushnarev explained to Eurasian Metals’ reporter, «the reason is that experts want to discuss practically all aspects of this problem».

«Two years ago, at the U.N. Summit of the Millennium, the president of Russia put forward an initiative to secure energy supply for a steady evolution of the civilization, to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons and improve ecology on the Earth planet», said president of NSR Anatoly Zrodnikov in his opening remarks. «It goes without saying that specific questions connected one way or another with solving key energy problems have to be widely discussed. Our conference should give an impetus to new ideas, new undertakings, new innovation projects in the field of energy in general and in nuclear power and nuclear technologies in particular», he said.
The discussion could not but concentrate on a threat of the irreversible climate change on the planet. In this connection probably most of attention was riveted on the problem of the man-caused atmospheric pollution contributing to the global warming. As is known, power installations and, above all, coal- and oil-burning electric power stations remain the major sources of greenhouse gases.

R    E    F    E    R    E    N    C    E  Nuclear Society of Russia (NSR) was founded in 1989. It unites on a voluntary basis Russian scientists, specialists in production, operation and management, lecturers and college students, who either work at enterprises of nuclear industry or study its use and do research in the nuclear and related sciences as well as popularize them. As NSR’s charter says, the main task of the society is «to promote creative activity, to effectively use intellectual and production resources, to arrange interaction of specialists with broad sections of the general public so as to find a complex solution of problems connected to safe development of the nuclear science and technologies». NSR is maintaining close contacts with similar organizations in other nuclear countries. There is an active youth section in NSR, which in 2000 became one of cosponsors of holding a regular international youth nuclear congress as «a dynamic forum for personal contacts among representatives of the new generation of professionals in the nuclear field».

«Ten-year attempts to set up an international system for managing emission of greenhouse gases failed. The mechanism, which was used to restrain emission, ignored such an energy source as nuclear power and this resulted in reduced opportunities for many countries to solve problems of growing energy demands», the conference was told.
It was no accident whatsoever that in March 2000 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its report on ways of greenhouse gas emission stressed the necessity to widely introduce non-hydrocarbon technologies of generating electric power after 2020. In particular, it is assumed that there will be a comparatively small growth of electric power production at coal-burning thermal power plants. At the same time it is predicted that there will be a significant increase of electric power capacity using natural gas. However, the further escalation of ecological problems will make it necessary to give preference to a cleaner way of producing electric power. This may be achieved by producing electric power at nuclear power plants and large hydroelectric stations as well as by using renewable energy carriers (for example, wind and solar energy).
It is expected that in the XXI century the power engineering will be developing in the free market conditions. That is why many analysts, including those with the World Energy Council, strongly support the idea of using mainly the potential of nuclear power. In their opinion, it will successfully compete both with traditional power systems (using gas, oil and coal) and the new ones, which use renewable energy carriers. Nowadays the nuclear power is more often referred to as «the main industrially adjusted way of electric power production, which permits to secure a long-term uninterrupted economic development with minimal man-caused impact on the environment».
And what about Russia? During the conference academician Yuli Israel from the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) gave a detailed answer to this question. He described the dynamics of the process in the following way: «Pollution of the environment was progressively mounting since the early 1950s due to production growth. After economic sanctions for discharges of pollutants were introduced in the 1980s, this growth slowed down. In the 1990s, with the transition of the economy and slump in production, discharges of pollutants decreased. However, it did not result in an adequate improvement of the natural environment».
Academician Israel gave this assessment of the situation:
«The analysis of data having to do with long-term monitoring of polluting discharges from stationary industrial sources into the natural environment shows that in the last decade their reduction was accompanied by a lower environment protection activity. In a long term jump in industrial production along with the decrease of the environment protection activity may lead to further growth of the natural environment pollution.
As far as military and peaceful use of nuclear power is concerned, it brought about a radioactive contamination of the natural environment. This process features a wide range of extremely diverse sources of anthropogenic radioactivity: atmospheric, surface and underground nuclear explosions, breakdowns at nuclear enterprises and power plants as well as radioactive discharges in the course of their normal operation and the use of radioactive nuclides in various sectors of the economy»...

St. Petersburg. The Leningradskaya nuclear power plant. One of the reactor rooms

Other participants at the conference vigorously objected to this assessment. According to their arguments, it ignored tendencies in the modern nuclear power industry. In the opinion of atomic scientists, this industry, on the contrary, is distinctively moving now to more safety, efficient technologies and ecological protection. In principle, any sector of industrial production should take the same direction. But for the time being only the nuclear power industry seems to be concerned about it.
The heightened interest of the Russian society in encouraging prospects of the nuclear power industry, its economic transformations as well as changes in the national economy as a whole, which are yet to happen, are presenting atomic scientists with new problems and tasks.
Russian deputy minister for Atomic Energy (Minatom) Valery Lebedev formulated these tasks:
«The main thing that unites all those present here today (and there are not only supporters of nuclear power but its opponents as well), is a sincere desire to secure an ecologically safe development of nuclear power engineering and industry. In the last years Russia’s Minatom has taken steps to upgrade the level of the industry’s ecological safety. Efforts to salvage nuclear submarines have become more active on a large scale, the operational safety of nuclear power plants has been significantly improved. Past secrecy of information with respect to ecological safety of nuclear power plant has been successfully overcome. On the whole, the industry’s transition to new, tighter standards of radioactive safety has been ensured. However, the conference’s attention is centered exactly on our discussions of the real problems to strengthen ecological safety further and drafting of ways and means to solve them.
Elaboration and practical application of scientifically substantiated methods and assessments, analyses and long-term forecasts of man-caused risks should become a scientific base of steady development. It pertains most to prospects of the power industry’s development and the role of nuclear technologies. The accumulated data on the analyzed man-caused risks prove convincingly that nuclear power enginiiring has glaring advantages as compared with other types of electric power production. The comparative analysis shows that the same is true for protecting health and natural environment».
«Unfortunately, the society does not always accept such data as being unbiased», stated Nikolai Laverov, vice president of RAS. «Therefore, one of the most important problems is to popularize achievements of the industry with respect to ecological safety. Besides, it is clear that the subject of the conference stretches to many decades to come. Efforts to solve problems of radioactive waste as well as other kinds of hazardous waste should not be limited to promoting a civilized approach to the environment and the need of its preservation. They also should include a constant upgrading of technical and technological methods to eliminate radiation hazard».
There were meetings of different sections at the conference as well as round-table debates. Here are just a few subjects that were discussed:
- anthropogenic impact on the biosphere;
- standardization of man-caused effects on human beings and the environment;
- man-caused risks (comparing radiation, chemical and other man-caused risks);
- man-caused accidents and natural disasters (comparing aftereffects of radiation and other accidents as well as disasters for human beings and the biosphere);
- rehabilitation of ecologically damaged territories (ecological rehabilitation including measures envisioned by laws on processing irradiated nuclear fuel);
- recycling of materials and reclamation of waste (comparing ecological aftereffects of treating irradiated nuclear and other toxic waste);
- ecology and public opinion; political, informational and educational aspects.
The main conclusion of discussions was: «The long experience of operating nuclear power installations proves that under normal conditions their impact on the natural environment is not large as compared with the natural background. So as to upgrade the ecological safety of nuclear power, efforts are being made now to develop reactors with the built-in safety. The physical design of these reactors rules out a possibility of major accident with discharges of radioactive nuclides into the natural environment. At the same time problems of safe handling of radioactive waste and irradiated nuclear fuel are being solved».
As one of the prominent participants said, such conferences mean, above all, sharing of experience and new technologies aimed at the industry’s development. They permit experts and enterprises to join efforts in such areas as operation, maintenance, diagnostics, management systems, etc.
International observers are impressed by the fact that Russia’s nuclear power industry, which endured the Chernobyl disaster and dismantling of nuclear superpower attributes, is on the upswing again. And the presence of foreign experts at NSR’s conference showed that the Russian experience is still of interest to the world community. As the Vice president of IAEA Vladimir Murugov explained this in quite unambiguous terms:
«This conference in Russia has a special meaning for the world community. The problem of steady development covers all aspects of life of the modern civilization. Two years ago the Russian president called upon the international community to get down to solving this problem under the aegis of IAEA. His initiative was discussed and supported by 138 IAEA member-countries as the top priority of their activities. By IAEA’s decision, an international project was set up uniting leading nuclear states since 2000. The participation of Russian scientists in this project is quite significant. The present conference has become one more contribution on their part to ensuring a steady evolution of the human race».
And on this upbeat note the XIII International Scientific and Technical Conference of NSR ended up its work. The next one is to take place within a year. But atomic scientists have already started work on implementing the planned global projects.