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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.

Turkey's plans to buy missile systems from the US should not be interpreted as a willingness to host missile defence shield components on its territory, Turkish daily Today's Zaman said on September 21. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has denied media reports that Turkey is buying missile interceptors against a threat posed by Iran, the daily said. Iran was the main target of the missile defence shield initiative of former US president George W Bush, to be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic, scrapped by Barack Obama on September 17. Having rebuffed the Bush administration on the plans to put missiles on its soil, Turkey re-inforced its stance that it would host Nato equipment, but not join US initiatives outside the alliance's framework. With reports in the US saying that the department of defence notified congre

Moscow hopes that Washington will realize the 'counter productivity' of its plan to deploy elements of U.S. missile shield in central Europe, the Russian foreign minister said on Tuesday. "I hope that the revision [of the missile shield plans] in Washington... will result in an understanding that unilateral steps in this sphere are counterproductive," Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Russia's Vesti channel. U.S. President Barack Obama, currently in Moscow on a three-day visit, has shown less interest than President George Bush in opening a missile interceptor base in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic, which Moscow has fiercely opposed as a security threat. Obama has not yet announced a final decision on whether to move ahead with the missile shield. The Bush administration said the missile defense shield elements were to counter possible strikes from "rogue" states, and not aimed against Russia.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned the United States Friday that if it did not reach agreement with Russia on plans for missile defense systems, Moscow would deploy rockets in an enclave near Poland. In sharp contrast to his positive words during President Barack Obama's visit to Moscow earlier this week when the two reached broad agreement on nuclear arms cuts, Medvedev used a news conference at the G8 summit to return to Russia's earlier tough rhetoric on arms control. Referring to an order he gave earlier this year to prepare deployment of short-range Russian missiles in the western enclave of Kaliningrad to answer to any U.S. deployment of a missile shield in central Europe, Medvedev said:

On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station reactor number 4 exploded at 1:24 a.m. "Tons of radioactive dust was" unleashed "into the air…transported by winds, [and] it contaminated both hemispheres of our planet, settling wherever it rained. The emissions of radioactivity lasted [short-term] for 10 days."(1) On 29 April, "fatal levels of radioactivity were recorded…in Poland, Austria, Romania, Finland, and Sweden."(2) The day after (30 April), it hit Switzerland and Italy. By 2 May, it reached France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Great Britain, and Greece. The next day, Israel, Kuwait, and Turkey were contaminated. Then, over the next few days, "radioactive substances" were recorded in Japan (3 May), China (4 May), India (5 May), and the US and Canada (6 May). The radioactive spew from this explosion was "200 times greater than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima."(3) Not one person was safe from this catastrophic nuclear explosion; and "65-million people were contaminated...more than 400,000 people were forced to evacuate the area [around Chernobyl], losing their homes, possessions and jobs, as well as their economic, social, and family ties."(4) The long-term and hidden costs of radioactive contamination have never been adequately reported by mainstream news. According to the authors (including the distinguished Dr. Rosalie Bertell) of a new book, "Chernobyl: The Hidden Legacy" "[i]t will take millennia to recover…[before an area] as large as Italy, will return to normal radioactive levels in about 100,000 years time."(5)

"Russian officials today laid the foundation stone of a new nuclear power station in Russia's westernmost region, Kaliningrad, which is sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov took part in the ceremony in the Neman district, along with Kaliningrad Governor Georgy Boos, and Sergei Kiriyenko, the chief of the national nuclear-energy corporation, Rosatom. The site of the planned nuclear plant, located just 20 kilometers from Lithuania's border, has been a cause of concern for local residents and ecologists, for whom memories of the 1986 catastrophe at the Ukrainian nuclear plant of Chornobyl remain fresh. More than 300,000 people were evacuated in the wake of the disaster from areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. It also spread a cloud of radiation across much of Europe. "

"In conjunction with other large energy producers around the world, most notably the United States, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has just tabled a proposal to pump $1.77 billion into its nuclear industry to fund new plants, Russian news agencies have reported. Charles Digges, 02/03-2010 The government infusion comes quickly on the hells of the announcement that Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear corporation, will be proceeding with the controversial Baltic Nuclear Power Plant in the Russian enclave of Kalliningrad, between Lithuania and Poland. "

Alarmist predictions that the long-term health effects of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan will be worse than those following Chernobyl in 1986 are likely to aggravate harmful psychological effects of the incident. That was the warning heard at an international conference on radiation research in Warsaw, Poland, this week. One report, in UK newspaper The Independent, quoted a scientist who predicted more than a million would die, and that the prolonged release of radioactivity from Fukushima would make health effects worse than those from the sudden release experienced at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine. "We've got to stop these sorts of reports coming out, because they are really upsetting the Japanese population," says Gerry Thomas at Imperial College London, who is attending the meeting. "The media has a hell of a lot of responsibility here, because the worst post-Chernobyl effects were the psychological consequences and this shouldn't happen again."

"In the Polish village of Klempicz, less than an hour from the German border, Lech Wojcieszynski is hoping to bring the first atomic reactor to his country, overcoming the Chernobyl disaster's legacy. "I remember Chernobyl very well, but how long ago was that?" said Wojcieszynski, a local entrepreneur who arranged meetings with residents and government officials responsible for nuclear policy. "Technology has moved on to a completely different level." Nuclear power is back in vogue in Eastern Europe 24 years after the meltdown at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, the worst nuclear accident in history, which blanketed the region with radioactive dust and halted development of atomic power. Klempicz is second on a list of 27 sites competing for the $11 billion project. A decision will be made at the end of the year in the country where burning coal supplies 95 percent of energy. "

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.

It was supposed to diffuse a potentially explosive political conflict over nuclear power, but an independent panel of experts commissioned to study the future energy needs of the Czech Republic almost led to a government meltdown last week. After months of preparation, the group failed to present viable results at a July 4 meeting with Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek, shrouding the future of the country's ailing energy policy in further uncertainty.

"GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and a major Polish power company have agreed to collaborate on an initiative to build that country's first commercial nuclear power plants, the Wilmington-based company said Friday. The result could be a major financial gain for GE Hitachi. The memo of understanding between with Polska Grupa Energetyczna is one of the first steps toward building two nuclear plants, GE Hitachi spokesman Ned Glascock said Friday."