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"In late January, Dmitry Dmitriyenko, governor of Russia's Far Northern region of Murmansk, on the Kola Peninsula, met with representatives of the region's public organisations, ethnic and cultural groups, and members of the Public Chamber. Altogether, Dmitriyenko heard some 20 people - but not an environmentalist among them. Below is an opinion piece by Alexei Pavlov, Director of Bellona's St. Petersburg offices. Alexey Pavlov, 16/02-2010 - Translated by Maria Kaminskaya For those who have observed the situation, however, the meeting hardly came as a surprise. As soon as Dmitriyenko took the reins in March 2009, replacing Yury Yevdokimov at the post of Governor of Murmansk Region, environmentalists found themselves struggling to get the new governor's attention. Dmitriyenko's predecessor used to meet with environmentalists regularly and would listen to their opinions even if they were contrary to his own. Dmitriyenko, by contrast, never responded to the meeting request extended last year by Severnaya Koalitsiya (Northern Coalition), a group uniting five environmental non-for-profit organisations: Bellona-Murmansk, a WWF branch operating in the Barents region, Murmansk's Priroda i Molodyozh (Nature and Youth), the Kola Centre for the Protection of Wildlife, and the Kola Ecological Centre Gaea. Last May, a couple of months after the governor took office, the coalition asked for a meeting to discuss the Kola Peninsula's most pressing environmental problems, but never received an answer. "

"The Murmansk regional parliament last week approved the federal law on radioactive wastes. That could turn the region into a nuclear dump, environmentalists say. The law opens up for the underground storage of radioactive waste materials in the regions and leaves the regional and municipal administrations with a major responsibility for financing the storage facilities. The regional parliament - the Duma - approved the law amid massive protests from environmental organizations in the region. The new legislation is believed to have potentially serious consequences for people in the far northern region. Murmansk Oblast has a number of nuclear installations, both nuclear submarines, icebreakers and the Kola NPP, all of which leaves behind lethal waste materials."

"Legislators in Russia's Far Northern Murmansk Region, on the Kola Peninsula, have signalled a green light to the interment of liquid radioactive waste in their region - brushing aside the public and environmentalists' concerns and, effectively, giving Moscow authorities a carte blanche to create nuclear repositories in Murmansk, while the costs of handling the already accumulated stockpiles of radioactive waste will have to be borne by regional and municipal budgets. Anna Kireeva, 23/02-2010 - Translated by Maria Kaminskaya The questionable bill "On Management of Radioactive Waste" was passed in its first reading in the federal parliament in the Russian capital during a plenary session on January 20 and raised a storm of objections from Russia's ecological organisations. Non-governmental organisations decried the bill as a means for the Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom to attend to its own narrow interests while going bluntly against the interests of the nation. In an open letter to lawmakers in Moscow, they urged them to halt on passing the bill without making serious amendments."

"Disturbing reports are coming from Russia that the former nuclear maintenance vessel Severka may have sunk at the wharf of a shiprepairing yard in Alexandrovsk (former Polyarny) on the Kola Peninsula, in close vicinity to the large administrative centre of Murmansk. Russian authorities have yet to confirm or deny the information. Before the 1990s, the Severka was used to move spent nuclear fuel in Soviet-produced shipping containers of the type TK-12 from Andreyeva Bay - the former naval base in the northwestern part of the Kola Peninsula - to a transshipment site in Murmansk dubbed Area SRZ-35. There, not far from the grounds of Atomflot, Russia's nuclear fleet operator, the spent nuclear fuel was reloaded into railway cars to be shipped off to the reprocessing plant Mayak in the Urals. The Severka was also equipped with special tanks for shipments of liquid radioactive waste."

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).

"On a state visit Monday to Oslo coinciding with the anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe on April 26, 1986, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was greeted by banners brought 2,000 kilometres by representatives of Bellona Murmansk reading "Mr President, turn the attention of Murmansk's governor to Ecoproblems." Bellona, 28/04-2010 - Translated by Charles Digges Their appeals were heard as Bellona President Frederic Hauge attended a state lunch with Medvedev at Oslo's Akershus Fortress. Hauge delivered a letter from three of Bellona Murmank's representatives that was an invitation to current Murmansk Governor Dmitry Dimitriyenko to resume cooperation with grassroots organisations in the region to ensure a focus on renewable energy potential on the northern Kola Peninsula."

The last five strontium-fuelled lighthouses along the Barents Sea coast are now being replaced with solar technology. All together, 153 of the radioactive lighthouses have been removed as part of a Russian-Norwegian project. Since year 2000, Murmansk regional authorities have together with the Norwegian Finnmark county governor removed all the radioactive lighthouses (RITEGs) from the Russian Barents Sea coast. As many as 85 of the lighthouses were located in Murmansk Oblast, while 68 of them were in Arkhangelsk Oblast.

Aftenposten has revealed that Norwegian fisheries minister Helga Pedersen admitted knowing that the Russian submarine wreck Murmansk likely contained radioactive chemicals, despite earlier claims to the contrary. She denies charges that she lied about her knowledge, even when shown a letter she received in 2005 warning her about the dangers.

40 year old rusty spent nuclear fuel containers from Russia's abounded submarine base Gremikha were shipped to Murmansk this week. The voyage from Gremikha to Murmansk normally takes one day. This is the same route as the Russian retired submarine K-159 took when it sank northeast of the inlet to the Kola Bay in August 2003. The vessel which is sailing with the highly radioactive spent fuel this week is the 35 year old Serebryanka. The rusty spent nuclear fuel containers have been stored outdoor at Gremikha for 40 years, posing a grave radiation threat. They contain uranium fuel from some of the Soviet Union's first nuclear powered submarines, at that time were based at Gremikha. The submarines reloaded their deadly radioactive spent fuel to the onshore open-air storage site.

"After a long period of inaction due to tight financing, the Russian nuclear fleet operator Atomflot gears up for decommissioning several of its old nuclear vessels - starting with the 1977-built nuclear icebreaker Siberia. Spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste have been removed from the ship, and works done to ensure the hull bottom is watertight. Next in line are the icebreaker Arktika and the nuclear maintenance vessels Lotta, Lepse, and Volodarsky. Alexey Pavlov, 29/06-2010 - Translated by Maria Kaminskaya Each nuclear icebreaker has its own finite useful life period - an estimated time frame that the vessel can remain in service. It is impossible to keep extending the life span of an icebreaker's various mechanisms without risking an increased incidence of equipment malfunctions and system failures. The first to be laid to rest on Atomflot's roster of nuclear icebreakers was the icebreaker Lenin: The veteran icebreaker is now permanently moored in the far northern city of Murmansk, retrofitted to function as a museum. Lenin's successors will be sent for complete dismantling, beginning with the Siberia. The vessel, which was put into commission in 1977 and broke Arctic ice until it was taken out of service in 1992, has been awaiting decommissioning for 18 years. Until very recently, Russia had no sufficient means to allocate to the costly procedure."

Russia is well underway to improve the situation in the Andreeva Bay, an official from Rosatom confirmed in a seminar yesterday. Sweden, Norway and the UK pledge continued support to the clean-up of the site, one of the world's biggest and worst protected storages for spent nuclear fuel. However, the most important question still remains to be solved: how to remove thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel assemblies, the Bellona Foundation underlines. This week, the environmental organisation organised a seminar on the issue in Murmansk. Spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste storage facilities at Andreyeva Bay were hastily built during the Soviet era. They were meant to be used on a temporary basis to house nuclear materials, which are still being stored there at enormous risk to the environment and local community. The facilities store more than 20,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies, Bellona.org reports.

Enough processed uranium to make six nuclear weapons was secretly transported thousands of miles by truck, rail and ship on a monthlong trip from a research reactor in Budapest, Hungary, to a facility in Russia so it could be more closely protected against theft, U.S. officials revealed Wednesday. The shipment, conducted under tight secrecy and security, included a three-week trip by cargo ship through the Mediterranean, up the English Channel and the North Sea to Russia's Arctic seaport of Murmansk, the only port Russia allows for handling nuclear material.

Enough processed uranium to make six nuclear weapons was secretly transported thousands of miles by truck, rail and ship on a monthlong trip from a research reactor in Budapest, Hungary, to a facility in Russia so it could be more closely protected against theft, U.S. officials revealed Wednesday. The shipment, conducted under tight secrecy and security, included a three-week trip by cargo ship through the Mediterranean, up the English Channel and the North Sea to Russia's Arctic seaport of Murmansk, the only port Russia allows for handling nuclear material. The 13 radiation-proof casks, each weighing 17,000 pounds, arrived by rail at the secure nuclear material facility at Mayak in Siberia on Wednesday, carrying 341 pounds of weapons usable uranium, said Kenneth Baker, a National Nuclear Security Administration official who oversaw the complex project.

In the course of summer, Russia removed another 46 strontium-fuelled lighthouses from the coast of the White Sea and the Barents and Kara Seas. With Norwegian project support, Russia has now removed 180 radioactive lighthouses between Murmansk and the Novaya Zemlya and replaced them with solar cell installations. Strontium-fuelled lighthouse (Fylkesmannen.no)The 46 lighthouses were all sent to the VNIITFA institute in Moscow, Rosbaltnord.ru reports with reference to RIA Novosti. Another 11 lighthouses will be brought from the island of Vaigach to Moscow next summer.

Russia's powerful state corporation on nuclear energy Rosatom has decided to construct a new nuclear power plant in the Kola Peninsula. The new plant will replace the capacities of the existing Kola NPP and begin production in the period 2017-2019. The Kola NPP-2 will be built on the coast of the Imandra Lake about ten kilometres from the existing Kola NPP, Rosatom's department on contact with public organisations and the regions, Igor Konyshev said to news agency Rosbalt.

The wreck of the Russian cruiser Murmansk was pronounced safe and free from radioactivity by government inspectors. However, equipment from the ship caused alarm when it triggered Geiger counters.

A new system for monitoring the storage for the highly problematic liquid metal cooled reactors is taken into use. The old cores of the liquid metal cooled Alfa-class submarine reactors have been stored in Gremikha for decades and posed a radiation threat both to the environment and local residents. The new monitoring system is financed by the European Union's Northern Dimension Environ Environmental Program (NDEP) and administrated by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The new computer-based monitoring system will be incorporated in the Murmansk regional system for radiation monitoring.

The nuclear powered icebreaker "Yamal" collided with the tanker "Indiga" during ice escort in the Kara Sea last week. The accident occurred in the Gulf of Yenisey on the 16th of March, the Ministry of Transport's Coordination Centre for Salvation Operations at Sea told news agency Sea News. The tanker got a 9.5 meter long crack on the main deck from the impact. The tanker was only carrying ballast at the time, and there was no pollution of the environment in the accident. The 16 168 tons dead weight tanker "Indiga" belongs to Murmansk Shipping Company. It shuttles between the oil terminal in the Gulf of Ob and the floating oil storage vessel "Belokamenka" in the Kola Bay.

"An energy transformer exploded into bits and pieces at the Kola Nuclear Power Plant located on the Kola Peninsula, in Northwest Russia. The incident led to a 50% reduction of power output from two reactor units leaving onsite spent nuclear fuel storage without energy supply. The authorities at the plant neglected to report about the incident. Igor Kudrik, 04/02-2010 "On January 15, 2010 at 16:48 while the plant was operating at 1433 MW capacity, due to a failure in the energy transformer, two 330 kilowatt electric mains, which supply consumers in the Murmansk region, were switched off. The 3rd and 4th reactor units reduced their capacity to 50% of nominal output in accordance with the guidelines," reported the press service of the Kola Nuclear Power Plant on February 3rd, 18 days after the incident took place. But the dry language of the press release disguised the severity of the event"

As US President Barack Obama seeks congressional ratification for the US-Russia Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation agreement - also known as 123 Agreement - this development may yet again open the route for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) transports into Russia for storage and reprocessing. The series of bilateral deals the United States has been signing with Russia and other states - or 123 agreements, dubbed so for the relevant section of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act - outline US prospects for nuclear-related cooperation with nations, groups of nations, or regional security organisations as possible only on the condition that proper agreements are in place with such entities and that these agreements are approved by the President of the United States and ratified by Congress. "