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"The Russian military allegedly dumped nuclear waste into the Baltic Sea in the early 1990s, according to a report on Swedish television. Radioactive material from a military base in Latvia is thought to have been thrown into Swedish waters. For many the biggest shock is that the Swedish government may have known at the time and done nothing about it. The partly enclosed Baltic Sea is known as one of the most polluted seas in the world. But now it seems it was also used as a dumping ground for Russian nuclear waste and chemical weapons. "

Estonia has completed the decade-long clean-up of one of Europe's most hazardous radioactive waste dumps on the Baltic coast, an official in charge of the operation said Monday. "EU experts considered the radioactive waste storage at Sillamae one of the four most dangerous sites of its kind in Europe," Tonis Kaasik, director of the OkoSil firm responsible for the clean-up of the Soviet-era dump told AFP.

In a couple of years, a new kind of vessel will appear at sea: the floating nuclear power plant (FNPP). The Academician Lomonosov, currently under construction in Russia, is only one project of several being developed so far. The formal keel laying ceremony took place in April 2007 at the Sevmash shipyard of the Russian State Center for Nuclear Shipbuilding in Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk Region. After about a year and a half, the state-owned corporation Rosatom revoked the general contract, handing it over to the Baltiysky Zavod (Baltic Plant) Shipyard in St. Petersburg. So now the birthplace of the first-ever floating nuclear power plant will be the Baltic Sea instead of the White Sea.

Information about the new Visaginas Nuclear Power Plant (VNPP) project is now available at the Internet website "www.vae.lt"; the website provides information about the project's preparatory work, career and business opportunities, as well as expert opinions. The website is in Lithuanian, there is also a shorter version in English.

"A senior parliamentarian in Lithuania has launched an investigation into allegations that stolen parts were installed in the country's only nuclear power plant, the Baltic News Service and other local media reported Tuesday. Rokas Zilinskas, chairman of the Baltic state's parliamentary nuclear energy commission, has asked prosecutors to look into claims that equipment stolen from Russia's Leningrad nuclear power plant was later installed in Lithuania's Ignalina facility. A company called Energetikos Tiekimo Baze allegedly shipped equipment stolen from Russia to Lithuania under false papers in 2003- 2004, media reports claimed. The equipment, described as servo drives used to lower graphite rods into the nuclear reactor, was allegedly later installed at Ingnalina. "If it is found out that the law and order institutions failed to take any (necessary) measures ... this will raise serious doubts as to their competence and ability to safeguard the interests of national security," Zilinskas said in a statement."

At present, Ignalina nuclear power plant buys the nuclear fuel for about 80% higher price than over the previous year. Network distribution companies are also preparing plans for raising prices. Ignalina nuclear power plant intends to present the request to the State Control Commission for Prices and Energy until October 2008 on the increase of the sale price for the produced electricity.

The Murmansk Region and Norway's northerly Finnmark County will assists and finance the liquidation of 71 radiologically dangerous Radioisotope Thermal Electric Generators (RTGs) used to power military lighthouses for Russia's Baltic Sea. Russia will also assist in financing the project. Alexey Pavlov, 24/04-2009 - Translated by Charles Digges Eight years ago, the Finnmark province and the Murmansk Region agreed to jointly solve environmental problems in the region. Replacing RTGs with thermoelectric generators for lighthouses fell within the framework of this cooperative effort. The RTGs had fallen into decrepitude over many years and become a radiological hazards for the entire Arctic region, as well as an attractive source of radiological theft for would be terrorists because of their remote locations. The Russian Ministry of the Interior contributed 747 million roubles ($23.7 million).

"Russia and Sweden have found themselves amid an international scandal stemming from allegations that Russia dumped radioactive waste and chemical weapons into the Baltic Sea in the early 1990s - and that Sweden disregarded later reports of the discharges. Bellona, 15/02-2010 The Russian military are responsible for chemical and radioactive pollution off the coast of the Swedish island of Gotland, the Swedish channel Sveriges Television (SVT) charged in early February. But Russia's prominent environmentalist, academician Alexei Yablokov, who served as an advisor to the late President Boris Yeltsin, and who further would be unflinching in casting stones at the Kremlin for shady radioactive waste dumping practices, told SVT that the allegations are dubious. In a documentary that aired on SVT, journalists quoted the former Swedish secret service officer Donald Forsberg, who said radioactive waste and chemical weapons were being unloaded into the area between 1989 and 1992. The materials buried there at sea had allegedly come from a Soviet military base in Liepaja, Latvia, following the Russians' hurried retreat from that Soviet republic after the break-up of the USSR."

Foreign Minister Carl Bildt denies that he had any knowledge of the radioactive waste and chemical weapons, that Swedish Television reports say could have been dumped in the Baltic Sea by the Russian military as late as the 1990s. According to Swedish Television's programme Uppdrag Granskning, the Swedish government at the time was aware of the dumping, but the Ministry of Defence decided it would be too difficult to investigate the matter. Swedish secret service agent Donald Forsberg holds that the Russians unloaded the chemicals near the island of Gotland between the years 1989 and 1992. "They just sailed out at night and dumped in two areas," he told the television programme."

Lithuania Thursday shut down its Soviet-era nuclear plant under an EU deal in a move set to drive up electricity prices amid an economic crisis and leave it counting on ex-master Moscow for power. "At 11:00 pm (2100 GMT) everything went offline. It all went according to plan," Viktor Sevaldin, director of the 26-year-old plant, told AFP by telephone. The plant, located in Visaginas in eastern Lithuania, provided 70 percent of the Baltic state's electricity. It gradually went offline from 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) Thursday, displaying its decreasing output on its website. It is similar to the one that exploded at Chernobyl in then-Soviet Ukraine in 1986, the world's worst nuclear accident.

Lithuania Thursday shut down its Soviet-era nuclear plant under an EU deal in a move set to drive up electricity prices amid an economic crisis and leave it counting on ex-master Moscow for power. "At 11:00 pm (2100 GMT) everything went offline. It all went according to plan," Viktor Sevaldin, director of the 26-year-old plant, told AFP by telephone. The plant, located in Visaginas in eastern Lithuania, provided 70 percent of the Baltic state's electricity. It gradually went offline from 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) Thursday, displaying its decreasing output on its website. It is similar to the one that exploded at Chernobyl in then-Soviet Ukraine in 1986, the world's worst nuclear accident.

"The conservative government of Sweden, which covers roughly half of its energy requirements with water power and half with nuclear energy, wants to build new nuclear power plants. The daily Dala Demokraten scrutinises the energy debate in the context of the upcoming elections in September: "Nuclear power has been represented as a virtually problem-free power source in the energy and environmental debates of the past few years. Therefore it is not surprising that the number of Swedes who want to use nuclear power has risen. The numerous problems that the use of nuclear power entails have been played down - despite serious incidents."

"The world's first floating nuclear power plant will be set afloat on Wednesday. The plant will be operational in the Russian Arctic by the end of 2012. The solemn ceremony marking the launching of the plant will take place at the Baltic shipyard in St. Petersburg on Wednesday June 30, reports the press office of Russia's State nuclear Agency Rosatom. After put on sea, the floating nuclear power plant, named Akademik Lomonosov, will be completed and undergo different stages of testing before it will sail to the north during the autumn 2012."

"Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius expressed hope that Minsk would drop its plans to build a nuclear power plant close to the Baltic country's border, BelaPAN reports. He said that Vilnius could encourage Minsk to change its mind on the project by offering cooperation in the sphere of nuclear energy, according to Lithuania's National Radio and Television. "

The Norwegian-Russian project on replacing radioactive strontium batteries with solar panels in lighthouses along the White Sea and Barents Sea coast and islands is now completed. In 2009 the project might be adopted in the Baltic Sea. All of the Northern Fleet hydrographical service's 153 lighthouses along the White Sea and Barents Sea coast and islands, have now been modernized to use solar energy as power source, Russian TV company TV21 reports. The radioactive strontium batteries that used to supply these lighthouses with energy have been shipped to the Mayak reprocessing plant in Chelyabinsk, Siberia.

MOSCOW, May 24 (RIA Novosti) - Russian nuclear power agency Rosatom dismissed on Saturday rumors circulating in the country's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad of a radioactive leak from a plant in neighboring Lithuania. Rosatom spokesman Sergei Novikov said several journalists had contacted him on Friday asking about an alleged accident at Lithuania's nuclear plant.

Top Russian officials on Wednesday acknowledged for the first time that a ship hijacked in the Baltic Sea might have been carrying a suspicious cargo, deepening the mystery around its seizure. Speculation has been raging that the Arctic Sea -- seized by pirates last month and missing for weeks before its recapture by the Russian navy in the Atlantic -- may have held weapons or even nuclear materials. The Maltese-flagged vessel with a crew of 15 Russian sailors was officially heading to Algeria with a cargo of timber. But Moscow's top investigator, Alexander Bastrykin, cast doubt on that theory. "We do not rule out the possibility that the Arctic Sea transported something other than wood," Bastrykin told the official government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

NOT one hand was raised in favour of an incinerator at last night's public discussion of an alternative to mass burn. The meeting, chaired by Rodney Brouard, saw about 200 people attend to hear what Baltic Development Group had to offer. The company put forward its method of using steam to treat waste, which separates recyclables and turns the rest into a product that can be used as an alternative to plastic.

Russia's plans to build a nuclear power plant in its Baltic territory of Kaliningrad, hemmed in between Poland and Lithuania, has local residents and environmentalists worried. Russian state energy corporation Rosatom announced plans last year to build a 1,200-megawatt nuclear plant near Sovetsk by 2016. The site is just 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Lithuania's border. But memories of the world's worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 in what is now Ukraine has convinced residents like Lyudmila Litvinova and others who went to a meeting with local officials that the risk is too high. "Why would we want to succumb to a radiation risk here in Russia," Litvinova, 52, told AFP.

"On an island in the Baltic Sea, Finland is building what it calls a permanent underground repository for spent nuclear fuel-but that depends on your definition of permanent. IEEE Spectrum writer Sandra Upson takes a trip to Olkiluoto Island to report on the construction of the Onkalo facility, bringing a science-literate but smartly skeptical view to her topic: Posiva, the Finnish company building an underground repository here, says it knows how to imprison nuclear waste for 100,000 years. These multimillennial thinkers are confident that copper canisters of Scandinavian design, tucked into that bedrock, will isolate the waste in an underground cavern impervious to whatever the future brings: sinking permafrost, rising water, earthquakes, copper-eating microbes, or oblivious land developers in the year 25,000. If the Finnish government agrees-a decision is expected by 2012-this site will become the world's first deep, permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel."