(April 6, 2001) Temelin opponents in Austria and the Czech Republic announced in the last week of March that they will boycott the Environmental Impact Assessment and Safety Analysis of the Temelin nuclear power plant that was agreed upon between the Austrian Chancellor Schüssel and the Czech Prime Minister Zeman last December in the Austrian town of Melk.
(546.5265) Jan Haverkamp - The organizations, including the Austrian Anti-Atom Platform, Global 2000 (Friends of the Earth Austria) and the Czech Hnuti DUHA (Friends of the Earth Czech Republic), South Bohemian Mothers and Calla, pointed out that this process has become a farce. The Austrian Greens and Social Democrat opposition parties also declared that they have lost trust in "Melk". Greenpeace's Erwin Mayer stated: "It was clear that the time for a serious Environmental Impact and Safety Analysis - to be done within two-and-a-half months - was too short. Also the way the commission was made up made us skeptical from the start. We therefore kept concentrating on concrete safety problems in Temelin and its extremely weak economic basis. For us Melk was a stillborn initiative."
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LAWSUIT DROPPED On 28 March, CEZ dropped a civil complaint against Greenpeace. In August last year Greenpeace had called for a criminal investigation because it had received information that important welding repairs to the main pipes of the primary cooling circuit of Temelin had been carried out in an unauthorized way, and that documentation about this was said to be falsified or destroyed. CEZ reacted with a complaint against Greenpeace for damaging its "good name" and asked for 5 million Czech Crowns (then US$135,000) compensation - an amount large enough to bring the Czech office of Greenpeace on the verge of closure. CEZ dropped charges at the last moment because it said that Greenpeace had not repeated the allegations and a police investigation into the matter had been shelved without result. Greenpeace, however, repeated its claim in the days before the court case and pointed out that the police investigation was shelved directly after the police received the name of a possible witness and the information on which documentation was missing. It furthermore pointed out that the State Office for Nuclear Safety (SUJB) is still investigating the issue and had already admitted that basic documentation is missing. Still, SUJB failed to report this serious affair in two of its quarterly reports to the government and gave permission for Temelin's start-up. Greenpeace CZ director Jiri Tutter: "It looks like it that CEZ closed the case to prevent us from bringing hard evidence to court. We will now sue CEZ and SUJB to open up all information on the matter." On 27 March, Greenpeace received a 10,000-crown (US$250) fine for staging an unannounced protest in July 2000 to draw attention on SUJB's inadequate responses, and the equipment used with a value of 300,000 crowns (US$7,500) was confiscated. On 30 March, a German activist was banned for three years from the Czech Republic for running a siren during that protest. Greenpeace filed appeal in both cases. |
The Melk commission is to produce its draft report in the second week of April. The Czech side has already declared that public hearings and public participation would probably not be possible in the give time frame. Commission president Jiri Hanzlicek - a fierce pro-nuclear advisor to Industry minister Gregr - stated that according to him public participation would not bring anything anyway.
From leaked information, it has become clear that the EIA part will not feature a zero-option (what happens when Temelin is stopped), as required by the European EIA guidelines that were meant to be adhered to. CEZ information staff tried to impress visitors with the statement that the public has access to all the information that the commission will see. The information on Temelin open to the public consists of a 21-binder pre-operation safety study from 1999/2000 - from which a large part is skipped because of commercial confidentiality - and the EIA reports made so far; a total of less than two meters of documents from 400 m2 of archive space filled from bottom to top, including an extensive microfilm part.
The environmental citizens groups do keep the door open in case an improvement of the situation occurs. There is time for such an improvement since it became clear that the secondary circuit and the 1000 MW turbine of Temelin block 1 has run into such serious problems that commercial start-up is not to be expected before September instead of early June. Some Austrian anti-Temelin groups announced they would restart border blockades around Easter. The Austrian government, in the mean time, stresses the possible benefits of Melk and calls to wait until the draft report is issued.
The Temelin opponents have also lost their trust in the Czech State Office for Nuclear Safety (SUJB). Jan Beranek of Hnuti DUHA/FoE CZ: "The management of SUJB refuses to give information to the public, and it did not notify the government of an investigation into a serious safety problem in the primary cooling circuit. SUJB is unaccountable, and such mistakes pose a danger to the Czech Republic's nuclear safety. We call for a thorough revision of the position of SUJB before final permission is given for commercial operation of Temelin."
Source and contact: Jan Haverkamp, Greenpeace Central European nuclear campaign, Cvrcovice 215, 273 41 Brandysek, Czech Republic
Tel: +420.603.569 243, Tel / fax: +420.312.693 612
Email: jan.haverkamp@ecn.cz