World Reconsidering nuclear powe F coneppguainentinaens ydroelectric the Smo- at Cher- k h n ane Charva i control wre. 4 : ion; tor strani power station; reac n pact after it was encased | From top: 8 e Pacific Tribune, March 9, 1988 OSCOW — Thefle- dgling Soviet envir- onmental movement, so young that it is still largely without program or national leaders, sur- prised itself once again last month. A grassroots citizens’ campaign in the south Russian territory of Krasnodar — a famous Black Sea resort area — forced economic planners to retreat and finally to _ cancel construction of an atomic power station in their neighbour- hood, even though some 25 million roubles had already been invested in the project. A chain of victories for the environmental movement, begin- ning with the Soviet government’s decision to shelve a grand plan for diverting Siberian rivers in August 1986, has led through the quashing of a large number of ecologically unsound industrial projects to this From ar ipehea > Fred ae present confrontation with the most problematic question of all: How safe is the peaceful atom? It was the Chernobyl accident that finally cracked the invulnera- ble facade of the nuclear power industry in the USSR, and General Secretary Gorbachev himself who set the tone for the ensuing debate. “They say that one thorn of.expe- rience is worth more than a whole forest of instructions,” he wrote last September. “For us, Cher- nobyl became such a thorn...” The citizens’ movement that forced a halt to the Krasnodar nuclear station last month was composed of workers, scientists, doctors and students. They pro- tested the project in various ways, in particular by deluging local and central media outlets with letters that drew attention to the seismic instability of their region, to its unique and irreplaceable natural heritage and to its reputation as a health resort centre. In early Feb- ruary the fuel and energy complex bureau of the USSR Council of Ministers finally bowed to their demands, and decided to build a conventional thermal electric sta- tion instead. “The Krasnodar nuclear power plant is perhaps the first to witness this,” notes the newspaper Kom- somolskaya Pravda, “‘but it is not the only one.” Virtually all of the 20 operating atomic stations in the country, as well as those being built, face “bitter opposition” from _ local citizens’ groups, the paper says. To some extent the extraordi- nary successes of the new Soviet environmental movement are to be explained by the fact that they are forcing an open door. The Gorba- chev leadership has not only been encouraging the public to speak up and take a hand in all decision- making processes, it has also introduced a sweeping reversal of most past economic policies and sought to abandon many of those impressively huge but economi- cally and ecologically dubious con- struction projects for which the Soviet Union was once famous. “Extensive” economic develop- ment reached its limits of growth in the USSR by the 1960s, although the,then Brezhnev leadership failed to notice this. Mesmerized by the onward and upward march of production statistics on charts and graphs — as if that were the ulti- mate measure of progress under socialism — they made a fetish of sheer quantity, often without much reference to indexes of quality or usefulness. If there was a shortage of widgets in the country, their solution was to build more and bigger widget factories, even if this tied up prohibitive amounts of cap- ital and labour power in construc- tion projects that dragged on, sometimes for years. Environmen- tal objections were sometimes treated with hostility, as if they were reactionary obstacles to pro- gress. The new leadership is trying, painfully, to switch the country over to “intensive” economic methods. A single widget factory, with an enthusiastically involved workforce, intelligent and long- term organization and the latest technology might produce more than 10 old widget factories. Better quality widgets will last longer, meaning that fewer need to be made. These reconsiderations, increas- ingly spurred by citizen environ- mental activists, have now come face-to-face with the electric power industry, once the sacred cow of the Soviet economy. A growing debate is taking shape in the Soviet press, with advocates of the more-is-progress school lining up against a surpris- ingly sophisticated array of critics. Two recent exchanges between scientists in the weekly Moscow News indicate that it is not only nuclear power but the entire cycle of energy production and con- sumption that is now coming under scrutiny. For instance, notes power engi- neer Alexei Gorshkov, in the USSR, where little thought has been given to conservation ‘“‘we could, through energy-saving mea- sures, cut the production of prim- ary energy resources by 50 per cent . Lam convinced that this could serve as an alternative to atomic power stations”. One contribution has come from an unexpected source: Dr. Andrei Sakharov, famous nuclear physicist and erstwhile “‘dissident’”’, has weighed-in with his idea that nuclear power stations — which in his view are necessary — must be built deep underground in geo- logically secure areas. “I estimate that the total cost of such measures won’t exceed the costs incurred by the Chernobyl accident, roughly 8 billion roubles,” he writes. “Much more important is the damage done to people’s lives, health and peace. The safety of nuclear power engineering is not a purely eco- nomic or technical problem, it is also one of the key issues of today’s morals and psychology.” This debate is in its infant stages, dominated so far by the collision of scientists and experts in the press, and the grassroots action of local citizens’ groups in places like Krasnodar. Central environmental organizations, still very much in formation, seem as yet unable to bridge the gap between the two. “We are listening very carefully to the discussion about nuclear power,” says Vadim Burlak, writer and president of one of the new Moscow-based ecology groups, “but we have yet to make up our minds about it. Our movement still lacks experts.” Burlak’s group, called “Travels for Peace and Environment,” con- centrates on organizing field trips to areas of ecological concern, where the group’s members study the situation, connect with local activists, and report their findings to the press. One difficulty in assessing the nuclear power question, says Bur- lak, is that all of the current large- scale alternatives also exact an environmental price of their own. “Thermal-electric plants pollute the atmosphere and create acid rain,’ he says. “And as for hydropower stations, I grew up on the banks of the Dnieper River, where the first Soviet ones were constructed, and I know full well what a drastic and deleterious impact they can also have on the ecology. The whole question is exceedingly complicated.” Little can be ventured at this point as to where this debate is leading or what eventual impact it will have on Soviet economic planning. But a few observations are very much in order concerning the speed of change, the depth of discussion and the extent to which large numbers of people — from diverse walks of life — are being drawn into the. process. First, it is a paradox — and a very troubling one for long-time friends of the Soviet Union — that we must look at this stage for signs of the success of perestroika in turmoil, discontinuity and conflict. Yet would not a perestroika that moved smoothly and effortlessly from one glorious victory to another be a highly suspicious affair? The image of people in Kras- nodar and other places mobilizing themselves to confront old habits and existing bureaucracies may be an uncomfortable one for some. Yet the fact they are doing it, and winning, is the best evidence yet that the democratization is taking hold and that real power is indeed shifting to the grassroots. Second, the quality and enthusi- asm of the emerging debate around — nuclear energy is stunning confir- _ mation of Gorbachev’s thesis that democratization is the necessary precondition of economic restruc- turing. Without input from the — public, the unbridled rule of eco- nomic planners and technocrats may lead inexorably to Chernobyl- like blunders. It is the role of the people to stop the experts, when they begin to put forward their ele- gant solutions, and drive them back to the drawing board again and again until they come up with the right solutions. Finally — a small but telling point — it must be gratifying for those Soviet leaders who took the risk of reversing much past policy, to see that Andrei Sakharov — until recently so dangerously at odds with his own state and the darling of every anti-Soviet current in the West — once uncondition- ally released from his confinement, given his old job back and a plat- form in the press, has turned his undoubtedly fine scientific mind and political talents immediately toward common problems facing his own people and the world. It is hard to argue with results like that.