Explosion at Leningrad–due to bad management, says Greenpeace
St.Petersburg. 16 December 2005—Greenpeace today stated that bad management and the use of obsolete equipment are to be
blamed for the explosion in the smelting furnace of Ekomet-C Nuclear Power Plant last night. Three persons were
seriously injured last night as a result of the blast in the smelting furnace of the Chernobyl-type RBMK reactor - in
Sosnovyj Bor near St. Petersburg at the Baltic Sea.
”This is yet another clear and potentially fatal example of why Nuclear energy is not the answer to energy needs in
Russia or anywhere else,” said Jan vande Putte, of Greenpeace International. “It is painfully clear that bad management
and lack of common sense is to blame for this atrocity. Governments cannot continue to turn a blind eye to this
situation. The only way to go is clean energy and renewables.”
Ecomet-C is a private company working in the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant (LNPP), processing radioactive contaminated
metal from the LNPP and other reactors in Russia. For more than three years the company has been illegally processing
this waste, without passing the state environmental impact assessment. (SEIA). The recycling of radioactive contaminated
metal has serious risks for public health, as such metals might end up in household products.
Eighteen months ago Greenpeace filed a suit to the Prosecutor’s office in Sosnovy Bor demanding a suspension of the
illegal activities. However the deputy prosecutor Miklina, having admitted there was no SEIA, responded that “no grounds
were found to initiate legal proceedings”.
The explosion at the site took place at some 500 metres from the storage of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. Any
serious damage to such storage could release more radioactivity than the Chernobyl accident in 1986. “Having a
large-scale commercial industry located so close to this sensitive storage is highly irresponsible,” added Vande Putte.
The Leningrad plant holds 4 reactors of the so-called Chernobyl-type (RBMK). The Russian utility Rosenergoatom who
operates the reactors intends to extend the lifetimes of reactors that are reaching more than 30 years of age and build
a new electricity grid to export electricity to Finland. "This accident again illustrates that the nuclear reactors at
Leningrad NPP are operated in a totally irresponsible way" said Vladimir Tchuprov of Greenpeace Russia. "Instead of
exporting high-risk electricity to Finland, they should be shut down at once."