By IPS Correspondents
MOSCOW, Oct 12 1995 (IPS)

Russian security forces are continuing their campaign against environmental groups working in the Arctic region.

Reports reaching here this week said the offices of a local environmental group in Sverodvinsk were broken into recently by the Federal Counter Intelligence Service (FSB) — formerly the KGB.

“We fear that this may be part of a wider action by the security police in Russia against all groups working on nuclear issues in the North,” says Thomas Nilsen of the Norwegian environmental group, Bellona.

Last year Bellona published a detailed and extensive report on nuclear contamination on the Russian Arctic covering the nuclear submarine facilities of the Northern Fleet as well as the civilian nuclear shipping facilities in Arctic port of Murmansk.

The Foundation was planning to publish an updated version of the report shortly. But Bellona’s offices in Murmansk were broken into by the FSB on the evening of Oct. 6. All their computers, communications equipment and written materials were confiscated.

The same day the FSB raided the flats of three Bellona members in Murmansk as well as one in St Petersburg and arrested another member at St Petersburg Airport.

“We have been working on the new report for over six months,” says Nilsen, “but they have taken all our materials including those on radioactive wastes and spent fuel.”

The timing of the raids is seen as significant. They took place while Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev was in Murmansk following a visit to Norway where he signed a co-operation agreement on greater information sharing in nuclear matters.

This was clearly unpopular with some sections of the military. The raids also came several weeks after a new presidential directive came into force which effectively put an end to civilian inspections of military nuclear facilities.

After a four-year struggle between Russia’s new nuclear inspectorate — Gosatomnadzor (GAN) — and the Defence Ministry, the military has finally prevented GAN from having access to military nuclear sites dealing with nuclear weapons of nuclear- powered submarines.

In 1991 Russian President Boris Yeltsin made GAN responsible for the safety of all nuclear enterprises and organisations, including those of the Russian Defence Ministry.

Its very first inspections showed that there were serious problems at these sites especially with respect to the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste, as well as the dismantling and disposal of decommissioned nuclear-powered ships and submarines.

GAN was especially alarmed at the stockpiling of spent nuclear fuel by Russia’s Northern and Pacific Fleets, as well as the lack of dependable containers for transporting this fuel to the Mayak reprocessing plant in the Urals.

GAN produced a damning report in 1993 on conditions at nuclear submarine facilities in the Arctic. This resulted in the Defence Ministry refusing entry to any other facilities.

Yeltsin caved in to military pressure while he was in hospital last July and issued Decree No 350 relieving GAN of any responsibility from mid-September for monitoring safety during the development, production, testing, maintenance, storage and disposal of nuclear weapons and military-related nuclear power units.

But GAN’s was not the only report. Bellona’s published in 1994 and containing 17 detailed maps of northern nuclear facilities, was even more damning.

It pointed out that the Kola peninsula in the Arctic has the highest concentration of nuclear reactors in the world. Moreover they are poorly maintained and increasingly accident prone, due to the present financial problems facing the Northern Fleet. In addition nuclear wastes are accumulating rapidly at over 10 naval bases more or less unchecked.

Bellona, which acts as an unofficial adviser to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry on nuclear contamination in the Arctic, is not giving up. They have visited the local FSB office in Murmansk with their lawyer to demand the return of their equipment and materials.

“They have no right under Russian law to confiscate our materials without a court order,” says Nilsen. Wednesday, Bellona members crossed the border into Russia taking new computers and communications equipment to the office in Murmansk. The members who were arrested have now all been released after several hours of questioning.

However the political situation is complex in the run up to the parliamentary elections and neither the Defence Ministry nor the Ministry of Atomic Power are likely to welcome any further revelations about nuclear contamination at any of their facilities. However, Bellona certainly has some supporters within the Russian establishment including the Foreign Ministry and GAN.

Relations have also been good with the Northern Fleet, says Nilsen.

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