de.indymedia.org | Worries over planned new nuke for Finland

Worries over planned new nuke for Finland

A consortium of French and German companies has won a ?3bn contract to build in Finland the first new nuclear power plant in Europe in 13 years. The Framatome ANP subsidiary of the French Areva group and its partner Siemens of Germany signed the agreement in Helsinki on 18 December to build a European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR) in Olkiluoto in western Finland. The deal has stirred up political controversy in Germany, which is officially ?abandoning? nuclear power, and elsewhere.

The German-based transnational corporation Siemens holds 34% of Framatome, the other 66% belongs to the French Areva corporation. The buyer of the plant to be built is the privately owned Finnish power utility, Teollisuuden Voima Oy (TVO).

A Siemens manager confirmed fears that this project would give nuclear power a new push. Uriel Sharef, a member of the Siemens AG central board of management, called the contract ?a milestone for the further development of nuclear energy.? By awarding the first contract Finland was clearing the way for further projects, he said. He said Siemens expected ?the Finnish example to be followed by other countries.? Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of Framatome's largest French owner Areva, called the deal "an historic decision which portends a renaissance of nuclear power in Europe".

The environmental organisation Greenpeace in Finland denounced the project as a step backward and said that it would continue its campaign against nuclear energy. Greenpeace said that the vote in Finland?s parliament had not made the problems related to nuclear energy go away.

On 15 December eight Greenpeace activists were arrested in Helsinki during a protest. A group of 35 Greenpeace activists from nine countries, dressed as Christmas gnomes, protested inside and outside the offices of TVO. "The eight who were arrested had slipped into the office building and had to be physically removed by police since they had chained themselves to the furniture," a Greenpeace spokeswoman said.

The Finnish Green Party left the former government coalition when the new nuke was approved by parliament last year.

The International Network for Sustainable Energy, an alliance of anti-nuclear NGO?s, has sent an appeal (

http://www.inforse.dk/europe/appeal.htm) to the government and the parliament of Finland, which says inter alia: ?Today there is enough evidence that nowhere in the world has the industry been able to demonstrate that it can safely deal with the highly dangerous wastes that are an inevitable consequence of the nuclear fuel cycle. Uranium mining has caused extreme damage to both environment and mankind. Chernobyl, Harrisburg, Sellafield and numerous other accidents have broken the myth that nuclear power is safe and clean. The mess created by the nuclear industry will take centuries to clean up.?

Construction of the 1,600 Megawatt reactor on Finland's west coast is to begin in 2005 and the station is to join the power grid four years later. An ?interim storage? for nuclear waste is also to be created nearby.

There are already two nuclear power units at the planned site and two more in Loviisa. In Espoo, there is also a research reactor operated by the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT). The VTO company says in 2002 25.6% of Finland?s electricity consumption was nuclear.

The new Finnish project also stirred up controversy in Germany. Although the policy of the government of Social Democrats and Greens is to gradually abandon nuclear power production over a period of about 30 years, the government had considered promoting the export by providing insurance cover through the state-owned Hermes corporation. Hermes guarantees usually underwrite German firms? deliveries to threshold and developing countries because of the risk that they won?t pay.

The policies of the federally owned insurer regularly trigger massive criticism by environmental and human rights organisations that this insurance cover consistently advances ecologically and socially destructive projects.

After the question arose in the EU Commission whether such a guarantee would have been compatible with European law, Siemens gave up its quest for Hermes cover for the sale to Finland.

France is also thinking about building new EPR type atomic power stations, which Framatome CEO, Vincent Maurel, claims to be ?the world's most efficient, and ten times as safe as any existing nuclear plant. The containment vessel is to be built to withstand the impact of a crashing plane.? Maurel also sees the deal as important to the future of nuclear energy on a global level.

Finnish Trade and Industry Minister Mauri Pekkarinen promised that the application for the permit to build the plant would be processed expeditiously. He expects the application to be handled soon after the new year.

But experts hold to the view that atomic power is uncontrollable.

They say the effects of an accident would be so enormous that atomic power stations can only be operated because they?re practically uninsured.

Although the cover of ?2.5 billion for atomic power stations is now ten times what it used to be, compared with the costs of a nuclear disaster it is practically negligible.

A 1992 study for the German economics ministry by the reputable Prognos Institute of Switzerland puts the cost of such a disaster at ? 5,500,000,000,000. No commercial enterprise would provide that kind of cover.

A 1992 Prognos Basle study estimates the price of nuclear power would rise to about 51 euro cents a kilowatt-hour if insurance cover were adequate.

The Aktionsbuendnis CASTOR-Widerstand Neckarwestheim (Action Alliance Castor Resistance Neckarwestheim) calls for mobilisation to a demo on 17 January 04 in Paris!

No new reactors in Europe and the world!
See

http://www.i-st.net/~buendnis/akt/paris0401.htm