EU funding plan for new Chernobyl reactors shocks activists

Fourteen years after Chernobyl sent a radioactive cloud across Europe, the EU Commission is likely to endorse a plan on Wednesday to fund two new nuclear reactors. These will be used as a replacement for the decaying Ukrainian plant in a move that the environmental movement regards with extreme suspicion.

Officially, Wednesday's discussion will centre around a report prepared by Eurocrats on nuclear safety in Eastern Europe, particularly in those states bidding for EU membership. But Chris Patten and Gunter Verheugen, the commissioners for external relations and EU enlargement, are keen that the institution should emphasise its support for the planned construction of two reactors which would provide energy to the Ukrainian people when Chernobyl finally closes in December. The reactors - Khmelnitsky-2 and Rovno-4 - are jointly known by the acronym K2R4.

Supporters of the plan point to a so-called "memorandum of understanding" reached by the Group of Seven leading industrial nations and the Ukraine in 1995. The first commitment in this document has already been reneged on - that Chernobyl would be closed by the year 2000. It also held out the possibility that the London- based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) would provide finance to construct K2R4.

But the pressure group Greenpeace accuses pro-nuclear lobbyists of quoting the memo selectively. Its nuclear campaigner Tobias Muenchmeyer said that it stipulates that the EBRD would only bankroll the reactors if it could be proven that this would be the most cost- effective option. Some studies have suggested that the reactors would not meet that criteria.

The perceived muesli-crunching brigade appear to have some powerful allies. In May the foreign ministers of Germany, Sweden and Austria all expressed their view that only non-nuclear projects should be aided in the Ukraine.

Although the EU is committed to giving #500 million to the Ukraine, both to help with the technicalities of switching off Chernobyl and to address its energy needs thereafter, the exact amount which K2R4 could get remains subject to bargaining. It is understood, though, that the EBRD is considering giving #216 million in loans to the reactors, which have a projected cost of #1.571 billion.

Greenpeace's Muenchmeyer believes that if the Commission supports the financing plan, it will be capitulating to pressure from nuclear giants such as Framatom of France and Siemens of Germany, who are planning to benefit from lucrative spin-off contracts, as well as the Ukraine's own nuclear lobby. He does not accept that the Ukrainian population will inevitably face severe power shortages if the new reactors are shelved.

"There are several alternatives available," he told the Sunday Herald. "The modernisation or upgrading of coal-fired plants; the construction of new gas-fired plants; or, perhaps most importantly, a large-scale energy efficiency programme."

According to Greenpeace, whenever a good is produced in the Ukraine, five to eight times more electricity is used than would be for a comparable product in the West. It would be far more productive, therefore, to invest in insulating heat pipelines and in the incorporation of energy-saving technologies into existing factories.

Furthermore, the energy problems in the Ukraine have been identified as having more to do with technical considerations and fuel shortages than with overall generating capacity. At 54 gigawatts that capacity is considered adequate yet it frequently runs at far lower than that, causing power blackouts in several regions during the sub-zero temperatures of the country's winter.

"Four nuclear reactors were not in operation last winter because Ukraine couldn't afford to buy more fuels," added Muenchmeyer. "To build more nuclear reactors in this context would be absurd."

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