Vladimir Vorobyov, head of International Standard Quality Management Department of Nuclear Reactor Institute of Kurchatov Institute

– It is not today that nuclear industry has become the ecologically safest industrial sector. It has always been such

The expert committee on the ecological situation in NPP zones of the Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Nuclear Supervision (Rostekhandzor) has recognized that in 2008 the nuclear power plants of Russia were ecologically safe. The findings of the committee were publicized during a meeting concerning the ecological activities of the Russian nuclear power plants in 2008 and their tasks for 2009. The key tasks of the ecological services of Energoatom Concern for 2009–2010 are to obtain Rostekhnadzor’s radioactive waste treatment license and to create an efficiency ecological management system complying with ISO 14001 standards.

Our reactors are the use of the Soviet experience, which has been recognized as the best and the safest. One example: in 1989, an IAEA commission inspected Gorky Nuclear Heat Supply Station and admitted that the technological level of that plant was so high that they abroad would be able to attain it no earlier than 2005. It was an absolutely safe plant: it would survive even detonation of two tons of explosives. One of the experts, he was from Canada – a country which had as many as 20 thermal power plants at that time — said that they were short of energy but were afraid of building a one more TPP as the hazardous stuff emitted by so many plants would simply kill them.      

It is not today that nuclear industry has become the ecologically safest industrial sector. It has always been such.