ANALYSIS: Chornobyl's closure means search for storage sites, new energy sources (06/18/00)

ANALYSIS

Chornobyl's closure means search for storage sites, new energy sources

by Tuck Wesolowsky
RFE/RL Newsline

PRAGUE - As expected, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma announced on June 5 that the last nuclear reactor at Chornobyl will be shut down on December 15.

Mr. Kuchma made that statement in Kyiv during a six-hour visit to the Ukrainian capital by U.S. President Bill Clinton. The United States has been one of several countries appealing to Ukraine for years to decommission Chornobyl.

The nuclear plant was the site of the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster, when the root of the fourth reactor unit exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing radioactive fallout across Europe. Although much of the fallout fell on neighboring Belarus, radiation was detected as far away as Japan. Today, only reactor Number Three is in operation. Number Two was shut down in 1991, and Number One five years later.

Mils Bohmer, a nuclear physicist working for the Oslo-based nuclear-monitoring organization Bellona, says it was the fading likelihood of more Western aid to upgrade Ukraine's rickety energy infrastructure, coupled with growing problems at Chornobyl, that prompted Mr. Kuchma to act now. "There have been a lot of technical problems with the Chornobyl reactor," he commented. "Since Christmas the remaining reactor has been [stopped] every other week ... because of technical problems."

Tobias Munchmeyer, an anti-nuclear campaigner with Greenpeace, says shutting down the sole operating nuclear reactor at Chornobyl should be relatively problem-free. The most pressing matter now, Mr. Munchmeyer says, is finding storage for the spent fuel and other radioactive waste inside the reactor. "The reactor contains [not only] spent nuclear fuel," he notes, "but also tons of light-, medium-, and high-radiated nuclear waste, and this has to be decommissioned to be stored somewhere .... The financing for this decommissioning work has been given by the G-7 countries."

During his visit to Ukraine on June 5 Mr. Clinton pledged $78 million to rebuild the sarcophagus entombing the crippled fourth reactor. Next month in Berlin, donors from 40 countries are expected to announce they have secured the necessary $700 million to rebuild the concrete encasement, which was constructed in haste following the 1986 disaster and now has several large cracks.

During Mr. Clinton's visit no mention was made of a project that has drawn criticism from environmentalists - the construction of two new nuclear reactors, at Khmelnitsky and Rivne, known as K-Two and R-Four. Ukraine has said the two reactors, which are about 80 percent finished, are needed to compensate for the energy lost from shutting down Chornobyl.

But there is growing Western reluctance to fund the project. Among the most vocal opponents are Germany, Austria and Sweden, which have offered to fund non-nuclear alternatives.

Emmanuel Bergasse, an expert in transition economies at the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), says Ukraine will have to choose between three main fuels. The first choice, he notes, is "expensive and environmentally polluting domestic coal, but the reform program of the present government calls for less aid to the coal sector. The second alternative is to put more emphasis on environmentally friendly gas - but ... gas is imported at quite a high cost from Russia and other CIS states, and further increases in gas imports would increase Ukraine's dependence on its powerful neighbor. Furthermore..., Ukraine already has a huge gas debt [vis-à-vis] Russia. The third alternative is nuclear power, which is relatively cheap but controversial both at home and abroad and which also would increase the country's dependence on Russia for securing nuclear fuel."

Messrs. Munchmeyer, Bergasse, and other energy experts say it is doubtful whether Ukraine really needs to build any new energy plants. Instead, Ukraine could meet its energy needs by better energy usage. According to Mr. Munchmeyer, "the energy problem existing in Ukraine is a fuel problem and an inefficiency problem. So on the one side, there is a lack of fuel and there is a lack of organization to get the fuel into the right places at the same time. The other thing is this huge inefficiency of the energy system. Ukraine is using five to eight times more electricity for producing goods compared to Western Europe."

Wasting energy is endemic throughout the countries of the former East Bloc. Mr. Bergasse says one of the main causes of poor energy efficiency are the high subsidies paid for energy purchases. He says a 1999 IEA study of 10 countries with heavy energy subsidies - including Russia and Kazakhstan - showed there is no incentive for saving energy whenever energy is subsidized or sold below cost of production.

"The non-payment problem which is pervasive throughout the CIS, although improving of late, is another form of energy subsidy," he explains, "So we calculated that the energy-savings potential of Russia alone is so enormous that if subsidies were abolished in Russia, Russia could save about twice the energy which Ukraine consumes today alone."

Mr. Bergasse says remodeling the energy sector is dependent on more overarching reforms. He says the three Baltic states have made the most progress toward cutting energy waste, partly because they have better defined property rights. Baltic homeowners, Mr. Bergasse says, feel more secure in making the investment to upgrade their home energy efficiency. CIS countries are still lagging behind in this regard, however.

Tuck Wesolowsky is an RFE/RL senior editor based in Prague.

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