Category: Action Reports

August 2011
Short­ly after the end of 1990 mora­to­ri­um the Pol­ish pro–nuclear lob­by, based around Nation­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (state insti­tu­tion of nuclear safe­ty) and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions involved in devel­op­ment of nuclear tech­nolo­gies, sup­port­ed by inter­na­tion­al nuclear lob­by has start­ed to work on the new plans of build­ing the nuclear pow­er plants in Poland.

1984 – 1990: Autonomous move­ment stops the con­struc­tion of Zarnowiec NPP

In the ear­ly Sev­en­ties the Pol­ish gov­ern­ment decid­ed to build two nuclear pow­er plants, based on Sovi­et tech­nol­o­gy ( with four pres­sur­ized water reac­tors VVER 440 each – sim­i­lar to ones in Temelin NPP in Czech Repub­lic and Kozlo­duj in Bul­gar­ia, build by a Sko­da plants in Czech Rep.) in Zarnowiec and Klem­picz. The con­struc­tion of Zarnowiec plant start­ed in 1982 in the midst of the eco­nom­ic break­down and polit­i­cal repres­sions of the Mar­tial Law.

The first protests against Zarnowiec NPP, orga­nized by aca­d­e­m­ic eco­log­i­cal groups, start­ed in 1984, but to no avail. It was only after the 1986 Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter when the oppo­si­tion against the plant gained momen­tum and pub­lic sup­port.

Soon after the loose coali­tion of anar­chist and green activist with a group of young mem­bers of var­i­ous anti–government polit­i­cal groups (includ­ing then ille­gal Sol­i­dar­i­ty), and Catholic Youth activists has emerged and start­ed to orga­nize own street protests and pro­pa­gan­da in var­i­ous cities across the coun­try.

In ear­ly 1989 the protest move­ment, still infor­mal and based on a non–hierarchical agen­da, start­ed to orga­nize week­ly street march­es in Gdan­sk, a city 50 kilo­me­tres from the site of Zarnowiec NPP, as well as sim­i­lar actions in War­saw, dur­ing the gov­ern­ment ses­sion on the nuclear pro­gramme.

The anti–nuclear move­ment grew stronger and stronger, with new groups and orga­ni­za­tions join­ing the protests. In the polit­i­cal tur­moil of 1989 the protest against the Zarnowiec NPP was seen as protest against the crum­bling dic­tature of the com­mu­nist par­ty, so many par­tic­i­pants have joined the street demos for pure polit­i­cal rea­sons – but the move­ment itself kept its apo­lit­i­cal char­ac­ter. Soon, even for the major­i­ty of nuclear sci­en­tists involved in the project it became appar­ent that the sovi­et tech­nol­o­gy used in the plant is unre­li­able and obso­lete, and the safe­ty and tech­no­log­i­cal stan­dards at the con­struc­tion site are appalling (accord­ing to Jany Waluszko, one of the anar­chist activists involved in protests, dur­ing the con­struc­tion of Zarnowiec NPP around 300 000 tons of cement was stolen from the site – deficit at a time con­struc­tion mate­ri­als stolen from the site soon become major source of income both for the work­ers and the local dwellers. As a result, dur­ing harsh win­ter made of rein­forced con­crete foun­da­tion of one of the reac­tors has cracked, due to the very low con­tent of cement in the con­crete – replac­ing stolen cement with a sand in the mix­ers was a com­mon way of con­ceal­ing the theft…).

Dur­ing the Round Table nego­ti­a­tions between Sol­i­dar­i­ty and the com­mu­nist par­ty in spring 1989 the Sol­i­dar­i­ty demand­ed the con­struc­tion of Zarnowiec to be aban­doned – as the result the ques­tion of nuclear pro­gramme was the only one not agreed in the process but, when Sol­i­dar­i­ty took over the pow­er in August 1989 the Mazowiec­ki gov­ern­ment refuse to autho­rize such a deci­sion. It led to the fur­ther esca­la­tion of protests – with a hunger strike, occu­pa­tion of local gov­ern­ment build­ings in Gdan­sk and a three months block­ade of the Gdy­nia har­bour, where the parts of the nuclear reac­tor were deliv­ered (against the own gov­ern­ment posi­tion, rank and file orga­ni­za­tion of Sol­i­dar­i­ty in the har­bour refused to unload the reac­tor from the ship and call for a ref­er­en­dum on the nuclear pro­gramme).

After three months stand-off, the reac­tor was unloaded by the Zarnowiec NPP work­ers and the block­ade of the har­bour was bro­ken, but faced with the ever grow­ing oppo­si­tion from protest move­ment and rank and file mem­bers of Sol­i­dar­i­ty (a call for ref­er­en­dum was soon sup­port­ed by 110 fac­to­ry comi­ties of S. in Gdan­sk region and large group of MPs rep­re­sent­ing the Cit­i­zens Comi­ties – polit­i­cal arm of Sol­i­dar­i­ty) the gov­ern­ment was forced to sus­pend con­struc­tion of Zarnowiec NPP for one year, at the begin­ning of 1990.

Such a deci­sion didn’t calm down the protests: the group of activists con­tin­ued an indef­i­nite hunger strike in Gdan­sk, start­ed on 8 of Dec, 1989, and grow­ing num­bers of local orga­ni­za­tions call­ing for a ref­er­en­dum. Such a social ref­er­en­dum, orga­nized sole­ly by local struc­tures of Cit­i­zens Comi­ties and the protest move­ment activists was announced on 25 of Jan. 1990 and held in Gdan­sk region, against the will of the War­saw gov­ern­ment, on 27 of May (prime min­is­ter Mazowiec­ki called the ref­er­en­dum “unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic” and refused any mate­r­i­al sup­port to it!). In major orga­ni­za­tion­al effort the protest move­ment print­ed and dis­trib­uted almost two mil­lions of bal­lot papers, and orga­nized polling sta­tions across the region. As a result, it achieved the turnout of 44%, with 87% of votes against the NPP and 13% in sup­port of it.

The gov­ern­ment ini­tial­ly refused to accept the results, but faced with grow­ing oppo­si­tion from local com­mu­ni­ties (vir­tu­al­ly block­ing the con­struc­tion site with farm­ing equip­ment and trac­tors), the gov­ern­ments of oth­er Baltic coun­tries (afraid of the plant, based on sovi­et safe­ty stan­dards) and seri­ous eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties was forced to aban­don the con­struc­tion of Zarnowiec NPP on 4 of Sept. 1990. This deci­sion was lat­er (9 of Nov.) con­firmed by a bill passed through the par­lia­ment: it also imposed the 15 years mora­to­ri­um on new nuclear pro­grammes and demand­ed a nation­al ref­er­en­dum to autho­rize it. (the ref­er­en­dum has nev­er been held and the work on new nuclear pro­gramme start­ed in 2005).

2005 – 2011: Sec­ond nuclear pro­gramme

Short­ly after the end of 1990 mora­to­ri­um the Pol­ish pro–nuclear lob­by, based around Nation­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (state insti­tu­tion of nuclear safe­ty) and aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions involved in devel­op­ment of nuclear tech­nolo­gies, sup­port­ed by the inter­na­tion­al nuclear lob­by has start­ed to work on the new plans of build­ing the nuclear pow­er plants in Poland.

After the 2007 elec­tions, won by the neolib­er­al Civic Plat­form, this plans got sup­port from the Min­istry of Econ­o­my, and on 10 of Novem­ber 2009 became a part of Nation­al Ener­gy Pol­i­cy 2030. Half a year ear­li­er, on 15 of May 2009 Han­na Tro­janows­ka was appoint­ed as a Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Nuclear Ener­gy (in 1982 – 1991 Tro­janows­ka worked as a design­er of first Zarnowiec NPP, and lat­er held senior man­age­r­i­al posi­tions in state – owned PGE ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion – soon cho­sen as an oper­a­tor of future Pol­ish NPPs…).

Since her appoint­ment the gov­ern­ment and the nuclear lob­by, linked now on per­son­al lev­el, have worked hand in hand towards the devel­op­ment of nuclear pro­gramme: on 16 of August 2010 offi­cial Pro­gram of Devel­op­ment of Nuclear Ener­gy was adopt­ed by the gov­ern­ment, and by the end of March 2011 gov­ern­men­tal projects of thirst two bills on nuclear ener­gy: the amend­ment of Nuclear Ener­gy bill (dat­ed back to mid–80s) and the Bill on Invest­ment in Nuclear Ener­gy where sub­mit­ted to the par­lia­ment. At the same time the Min­istry of Econ­o­my pub­lished the assess­ment of 27 sites around the coun­try, con­sid­ered as a poten­tial loca­tion of the NPP, with Zarnowiec as a win­ner an Klem­picz (a vil­lage in North West of Poland, around 60 kilo­me­ters north of the city of Poz­nan) as a run­ner up.

In May 2011 the gov­ern­men­tal plan of the pro-nuclear pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign (includ­ing nuclear ‘prod­uct place­ment’ in pop­u­lar TV series) has leaked to inde­pen­dent media, but was com­plete­ly ignored by the main­stream ones. The cost of the cam­paign was esti­mat­ed by its authors at around 20 mil­ion euros, paid with tax­pay­ers mon­ey.

By the end of June both cham­bers of the par­lia­ment has passed the ‘nuclear’ bills, sub­mit­ted by the gov­ern­ment, and from 1 of July both acts has come into force – with­out any pub­lic dis­cus­sion or atten­tion and any major amend­ments.

Accord­ing to the gov­ern­men­tal plan, by the year 2030 demand for elec­tric pow­er in Poland will increase by 30% com­par­ing to 2010, and by 2020, due to the lim­its on emis­sion of car­bon diox­ide imposed by EU, high­er costs of emis­sion rights and a neces­si­ty of intro­duc­tion cost­ly tech­nolo­gies lim­it­ing the emis­sion of green­house gasses (like CCS) in ther­mal pow­er plants the cost of pro­duc­tion of ener­gy in NPP’s will be com­pa­ra­ble to the pow­er plants using lig­nite as a fuel. In response to this chal­lenges by 2030 more than 15% of elec­tric ener­gy should by pro­duced by NPP’s.

To meet this demand, the gov­ern­ment is plan­ning to build two nuclear pow­er plants, first one by 2020 and sec­ond by 2030. The gov­ern­men­tal sources varies, when it comes to the pow­er rat­ing of the planned plants, with ini­tial plans sug­gest­ing that each plant will pro­duce around 4400 MW (in four 1100MW class reac­tors). This was lat­er (in 2010) down­grad­ed by com­mis­sion­er Tro­janows­ka to around 3000MW each (yet again, oth­er offi­cials of Min­istry of Econ­o­my opt for 3600MW, pro­duced by two 1800MW class reac­tors). Con­sid­er­ing the pow­er out­put of mod­ern reac­tors, it’s like­ly that the final rat­ing will be 3200MW a plant. The total cost of build­ing this capac­i­ty is esti­mat­ed by Tro­janows­ka at 20 bil­ion Euros (this esti­ma­tion is based on 4400MW vari­ant – the Min­istry of Econ­o­my is esti­mat­ing the cost of build­ing the nuclear plant at 4500 Euros for 1kW, which makes 16 bil­ion for a 3600MW plant and 32 bil­ion for a whole pro­gram). The cost of build­ing the plants will be beared by the investor and oper­a­tor of the plants – state-owned PGE (Pol­s­ka Gru­pa Ener­gety­cz­na – Pol­ish Ener­gy Group) pow­er cor­po­ra­tion. The direct pub­lic involve­ment in nuclear pro­gramme is to be lim­it­ed to around 18 mil­ion Euros over next ten years, that include estab­lish­ing the mod­ern nuclear safe­ty ser­vice and con­struc­tion of large scale nuclear waste stor­age.

The gov­ern­ment plan doesn’t men­tion the loca­tion of the stor­age facil­i­ty, as well as the pre­ferred tech­nol­o­gy of stor­age (with clas­sic nuclear waste damp site and more sophis­ti­cat­ed nuclear recy­cling plants con­sid­ered). Asked about it by the jour­nal­ists, Tro­janows­ka has avoid­ed direct answer and promised, that by the 2011 (half a year after the nuclear pro­gramme itself!!!) the plan for deal­ing with nuclear waste pro­duced by the plants will be adopt­ed. As for August 2011, no such plan was ever pub­lished.

Regard­less of it, the Min­istry of Econ­o­my has pub­lished the short­list of three Gen­er­a­tion III+ reac­tors, con­sid­ered for Pol­ish NPP’s. This include:

West­ing­house AP1000 – for a 4400MW a plant vari­ant, and prob­a­bly it’s upgrad­ed ver­sion, CAP1700, for a 3200MW vari­ant. The design was nev­er test­ed in prac­tice, with the first reac­tor to become oper­a­tional in Chi­na in 2014, yet it has already risen the safe­ty con­cerns, both from the nuclear safe­ty author­i­ties in USA (exter­nal shield sus­pect­ed to be vuner­a­ble to ter­ror­ist attack and earth­quakes) and UK (orig­i­nal design reject­ed due to a faulty design of valves in cool­ing sys­tem and, once again – design of the exter­nal shield) and envi­ron­men­tal groups (design of con­tain­ment ves­sel prone to cor­ro­sion and leaks).

Areva/EDF/Siemens EPR — rat­ed at 1650MW for a 3200MW vari­ant. None of EPR reac­tors oper­a­tional as for 2011, four in con­struc­tion in Europe (2 in Fin­land and 2 in France) – due to seri­ous design faults the orig­i­nal EPR projects were to be altered dur­ing the con­struc­tion caus­ing over two years delay and rise in cost. Safe­ty con­cerns by Finnish and French nuclear safe­ty author­i­ties, UK one reject­ed a design after find­ing seri­ous faults in safe­ty sys­tems design (the main and emer­gency con­trol sys­tems are inter­con­nect­ed so the fault in main one might dis­able the emer­gency con­trols as well).

Hitachi/GE ESBWR – boil­ing water reac­tor with inno­v­a­tive, but nev­er test­ed in prac­tice, pas­sive cool­ing sys­tems. Rat­ed at 1600MW, nev­er build, is expect­ed to be grant­ed US nuclear safe­ty author­i­ty approval by the end of 2011. Con­sid­ered for new NPP in Lithua­nia.

As the gov­ern­men­tal nuclear pro­gramme was made pub­lic, it was crit­i­cized both by envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion and by some lead­ing sci­en­tists in the field of ener­gy pro­duc­tion. Pro­fes­sor Wla­dys­law Miel­czars­ki from the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty in Lodz, Poland, one of most senior experts in this field in the coun­try and EU, denounces the basic the­sis of the nuclear pro­gram as unre­al­is­tic, he’s also ques­tion­ing the gov­ern­men­tal esti­ma­tions on con­sump­tion of elec­tric pow­er, costs of build­ing of NPP and pro­duc­ing ener­gy in such a plants. Accord­ing to Miel­czars­ki, in con­trary to nuclear pro­gram fig­ures, the demand for elec­tric pow­er in Poland might increase by no more than 10% by 2030, but just as well it might remain on the 2010 lev­el or drop, due to the high­er costs of ener­gy and intro­duc­tion of less pow­er – con­sum­ing tech­nolo­gies. This put the need for build­ing of NPP in ques­tion. Pro­fes­sor also stress­es the need of build­ing a new gas or coal pow­er sta­tion togeth­er with NPP, to cre­ate a nec­es­sary back­up pow­er sup­ply in case of reac­tor shut­down and sud­den drop in pow­er pro­duc­tion.

Miel­czars­ki strong­ly crit­i­cizes the finan­cial esti­ma­tions of the gov­ern­ment, accord­ing to pro­fes­sor:

- the cost of build­ing the NPP esti­mat­ed in gov­ern­ment pro­gram is far too low, espe­cial­ly after nec­es­sary alter­na­tions to reac­tor design after Fukushi­ma dis­as­ter

- as a con­se­quence, the cost of pro­duc­tion of pow­er in NPP in year 2020 will be around 60% high­er than in ther­mal plants, even if the CO2 emis­sion fees goes up as planned

- gov­ern­men­tal claims that the con­struc­tion of the NPP will be financed by a pri­vate sources are com­plete­ly unre­al­is­tic, as the cho­sen investor, PGE cor­po­ra­tion, can only bor­row around 4 bil­lion Euros of cap­i­tal, and the esti­mat­ed cost of nuclear pro­gram is 8 times high­er

From the envi­ron­men­tal and social point of view, it’s worth to cite the report of Jan Haverkamp, the ener­gy expert from the Nether­lands who pre­pared the assess­ment of gov­ern­men­tal Strate­gic Envi­ron­men­tal Assess­ment of the nuclear pro­gram. Accord­ing to Haverkamp, the whole doc­u­ment, con­sist­ing of more than 785 pages was pre­pared in less than one month, and doesn’t meet the inter­na­tion­al stan­dards of pro­fes­sion­al­ism for such a doc­u­ments. Many of it’s con­tent was sim­ply copy-past­ed from out­dat­ed brochures, issued by nuclear cor­po­ra­tion, with­out cit­ing the source(!!!). Assess­ment of the spread of nuclear con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in case of acci­dent was tak­en from a sim­i­lar doc­u­ment, pre­pared for one of the NPP in UK (!!!), with­out any research actu­al­ly being done in Poland. The doc­u­ment doesn’t deal at all with poten­tial con­se­quences of major nuclear acci­dent or radi­a­tion leak, on the scale of Fukushi­ma or Cher­nobyl, basi­cal­ly treat­ing such an event as impos­si­ble. Haver­camp also points out that the whole doc­u­ment and a pro­ce­dure of its pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion breach the rules set by Aarchus Con­ven­tion on pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in deci­sion – mak­ing, signed by Poland: it doesn’t include any alter­na­tives to the pro­posed con­struc­tion of NPP and a time, set by the gov­ern­ment for its pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion is insuf­fi­cient (21 days!).

The pub­lic per­cep­tion of the nuclear pro­gramme and the sup­port for nuclear ener­gy changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly after Fukushi­ma. Accord­ing to the polls., the sup­port for the pro­gramme has dropped from 50% in Sep­tem­ber 2009 to 40% in April 2011 (when the scale of Fukushi­ma dis­as­ter was yet unknown).

Togeth­er with a pub­lic pref­er­ences, the pol­i­cy of the gov­ern­ment and nuclear lob­by has changed as well. At the begin­ning of 2011, when the offi­cial intro­duc­tion of the nuclear pro­gramme to the pub­lic opin­ion was being made, there was a strong pres­ence both of pro-nuclear politi­cians and sci­en­tist from the nuclear lob­by in the media, even by the time of Fukushi­ma dis­as­ter they were still try­ing to defend both the pro­gramme and nuclear ener­gy.

After Fukushi­ma, and the ini­tial wave of protests after it, the nuclear pro­pa­gan­da and the whole issue of nuclear ener­gy dis­ap­peared from the media – pressed by the jour­nal­ists or activists the politi­cians claim, that the whole issue is not decid­ed yet and the fur­ther research­es and dis­cus­sions are need­ed.

Con­trary to this offi­cial line, the gov­ern­ment car­ries on with a pro­gramme – away from pub­lic atten­tion two nuclear bills were hur­ried through par­lia­ment in one month, with no seri­ous dis­cus­sions or oppo­si­tion, two months before par­lia­men­tary elec­tions.

As far as main­stream pol­i­tics is con­cerned, there is no seri­ous oppo­si­tion to nuclear pro­gramme, with rul­ing neolib­er­als (Civic Plat­form) strong­ly in favour of it, its allies from Pop­u­lar Par­ty offi­cial­ly talk­ing about a ‘need for dis­cus­sion’ and in pri­vate sup­port­ing the pro­gram, and Social Democ­rats call­ing for nation­al ref­er­en­dum on nuclear ener­gy. The right wing oppo­si­tion, the Law and Order par­ty, doesn’t present a clear stance regard­ing the nuclear pro­gramme. It was to be added, that as well as in many impor­tant issues in pol­ish pol­i­tics, all the may­or par­ties are try­ing to avoid a pub­lic dis­cus­sion and pub­lic involve­ment in deci­sion mak­ing, focus­ing the pub­lic atten­tion on ide­o­log­i­cal, per­son­al or his­tor­i­cal con­flicts instead. Because of it the nuclear pro­gramme and build­ing the NPP is not like­ly to became a major point of dis­cus­sion dur­ing the com­ing elec­tion cam­paign.

As for the non-par­lia­men­tary orga­ni­za­tions, the whole envi­ron­men­tal move­ment (with pol­ish Green par­ty – mar­gin­al in the main­stream pol­i­tics), the anar­chists, and a inde­pen­dent trade union Sierpien’80 (con­sist­ing of 10000 mem­bers – main­ly coal min­ers…) are strong­ly against the nuclear pro­gramme.

On a street protest lev­el, until 2011 the major protest group was Inic­jaty­wa Antynuk­lear­na (Anti–Nuclear Ini­tia­tive), the coali­tion of grass­roots envi­ron­men­tal activists, con­cerned sci­en­tist and anar­chists. The IAN split in ear­ly 2011 over the issue of tac­tics and coop­er­a­tion with polit­i­cal par­ties and main­stream NGOs, and since then the Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion start­ed it’s own, anti–nuclear cam­paign.

Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion against nuclear pow­er

The begin­ning of 2011 marks the start of anti-nuclear cam­paign of AF – PL. The state­ment on that issue, adopt­ed by the sec­tions of FA ( http://www.federacja-anarchistyczna.pl/dokumenty/item/5‑oświadczenie-fa-w-sprawie-rozwoju-w-polsce-energetyki-nuklearnej) focus­es on eco­nom­i­cal and social costs of nuclear pro­gram, it also denounces the con­struc­tion of NPP as a trans­fer of pub­lic resources to transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion pro­vid­ing the nuclear tech­nol­o­gy. The fur­ther devel­op­ments in nuclear issue unveiled the deeply unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic char­ac­ter of deci­sion – mak­ing, with the gov­ern­ment open­ly ignor­ing own oblig­a­tions regard­ing pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion of the pro­gram and avoid­ing and dis­cus­sion on the nuclear pow­er ques­tion. This was reflect­ed and con­demned in fur­ther state­ments and leaflets, issued by var­i­ous local sec­tions of AF and dur­ing the street protests orga­nized by them – in future, this will also be the focal point of our cam­paign.

So far on the street lev­el there were two major AF mobi­liza­tions against nuclear pro­gramme and a cou­ple of local events:

- short­ly after the Fukushi­ma dis­as­ter, on 19 of March there was a demon­stra­tion against build­ing NPP in Lodz, and sim­i­lar one, two days lat­er in Gdan­sk (sec­ond one was orga­nized by broad­er coali­tion, called Pomors­ka Inic­jaty­wa Antynuk­lear­na – Pomeran­ian Anti­Nu­clear Ini­tia­tive)

- the 25 anniver­sary of Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter was marked with a demon­stra­tions and pub­lic meet­ings in Lodz, Poz­nan, Gdan­sk, Krakow, and Czesto­chowa, all orga­nized or co-orga­nized by local AF struc­tures

- on 8 of May in Lodz a group of anar­chists dis­rupt­ed a meet­ing with deputy prime min­is­ter W. Pawlak at the tech­ni­cal uni­ver­si­ty unfurl­ing the ban­ner against nuclear ener­gy

- on 18 of May, dur­ing the con­fer­ence on nuclear pow­er held as a part of Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Forum in Katow­ice there was a demon­stra­tion against the nuclear pow­er orga­nized by Sile­sian activists of AF

As a part of a cam­paign, a brochure on the nuclear ener­gy issues will be print­ed, there will be also a lec­ture and work­shops on that top­ic dur­ing this year sum­mer AF-PL camp in Beskid Makows­ki, start­ing 14 of August.

Web site of Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion of Poland:
www.federacja-anarchistyczna.pl
con­tact: biurofa@gmail.com