Kola Nuclear Power Plant

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The Kola Nuclear Power Plant, or Kola NPP, is a nuclear power plant in Northern Russia.

[edit] History

The Nos. 1 and 2 reactors at the KNPP went online in 1973 and 1974 respectively and are part of Russia’s first generation of reactors (the VVER 440/230 type). They were designed to work for 30 years. Correspondingly, they should have been shut down in 2003 and 2004.

But this did not happen. Instead, their operational life spans, with a few upgrades, were granted. The licence for the their five-year operation extensions granted by Russia’s civilian nuclear regulator Gosatomnadzor, FSETAN’s predecessor, were issued without conducting an obligatory state environmental impact study. Conducting such federal level studies is mandated by the law "On environmental impact studies" in article 11.

It should be noted that the first extension for the old reactors was issued in summer 2003, almost precisely after former Deputy Minister of Atomic Energy Andrei Malyshev was installed as Gosatomnadzor’s chief. He replaced Yury Vishnevsky at this post. Vishnevsky had been an outspoken critic of the former Ministry of Atomic Energy, now known as the Federal Agency for Atomic energy, or Rosatom.

In April 2005, the Murmansk Regional Prosecutor issued a recommendation to annul the violations surrounding the reactor life-span extensions and force regulatory bodies and Rosenergoatom, Russian’s nuclear power plant operational conglomerate, to carry out the environmental impact studies. But none of these structures did as they were ordered.

The Murmansk Prosecutors again ordered the state structures to fulfil the earlier order, but got only the run around in return. In the near future, the Regional Prosecutor will send documentation on the case to the Prosecutor General in Moscow after a possible court petition regarding the non-compliance with the prosecutors’ recommendations.

Nature and Youth and Bellona ’s “Environment and Rights” magazine first drew the attention of prosecutors to the illegality of prolonging the life-spans of the reactors in 2004.