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Silk Road Reporters
Nov 8 2014
Armenia's Nuclear Problem
Published by John C. K. Daly
November 8, 2014
The Soviet Union may have imploded more than two decades ago, but
debris from its headlong industrialization drive still litters the
post-Soviet landscape, and nothing more unsettles the population of
the fifteen new nations carved out of the USSR than its nuclear
legacy.
The Caucasus nuclear concerns focus on the region's sole nuclear power
plant (NPP), Armenia's aging Metsamor facility, which provides nearly
40 percent of the country's electricity. Despite concerns about the
elderly NPP from neighboring Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and, farther
afield, the European Union, on Nov. 4 Deputy Minister of Energy and
Natural Resources Ara Simonyan during a parliamentary discussion of
the 2015 draft budget said that Armenia and Russia before the end of
the year will sign an intergovernmental agreement to extend Metsamor's
service life until 2026.
This is a turnaround on previous Armenian government policy, as only
six months earlier it approved extending Metsamor's service life only
until 2016. Concurrent with the announcement Armenian President Serzh
Sargsian said at the Third Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, `We
are closely cooperating with the IAEA on the provision of safety for
the Armenian NPP by consistently complying with the requirements of
the IAEA Technical Document. This is evidenced by the results of the
IAEA's OSART (Operational Safety Review Team) mission.' Azerbaijan's
President Ilham Aliyev was not nearly so sanguine about Metsamor's
safety despite Sargsian's assertions, telling the summit that the NPP
was outmoded and dangerous and should be closed immediately.
Metsamor NPP, which began operations in 1976, is located in one of the
world's most earthquake-prone regions, and is only 19 miles west of
the Armenian capital Yerevan in the Armavir region. Metsamor NPP
contains two VVER-400 V230 376 megawatt nuclear reactors generating
about 2 million kilowatt hours of energy annually, providing about 40
percent of Armenia's electricity.
Many environmentalists regard Metsamor NPP as a rickety, unsafe
accident waiting to happen. Metsamor was the first Soviet NPP designed
to be built in a region of high seismicity. Plans for units 3 & 4 at
the site were abandoned after the 1986 Chernobyl `incident.' The South
Caucasus region is a zone of high seismic activity, as colliding
Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates roil destructive tremors across
the Caucasus, eastern Turkey and northwestern Iran. The Armenian
government closed Metsamor's Unit 1 in February 1989 and Unit 2 the
next month following a massive December 1988 earthquake in Spitak in
the Leninakan-Spitak-Kirovakan area of northern Armenia. The 6.8
Richter scale earthquake, whose epicenter was only 45 miles from
Metsamor, killed more than 25,000, injured 19,000 and rendered 500,000
homeless, leaving much of northern Armenia in ruins and caused more
than an estimated $16 billion in damage.
The facility remained shuttered for seven years until power shortages
forced the Armenian government to bring it back online. In 1993, the
government decided to restart the NPP and, in late 1995, Unit 2 came
back on line. During the winter of 1994-95, Yerevan residents often
had only 1-2 hours of electricity daily. With the restart of Unit 2,
they were expected to have electricity for 10-12 hours daily.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the facility itself is a hostage to the
vicious politics disrupting the Caucasus. Armenia went to war with
Azerbaijan in February 1988 over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh
enclave. During the clash, which lasted until May 1994, Azerbaijan
blockaded roads, rail lines and energy supplies, leading to severe
energy shortages in Armenia. In 1991 pressure to restart Metsamor
increased after a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan was blocked
by a Turkish and Azeri fuel embargo. Since then, thermal power and
hydroelectric energy sources have decreased the blackouts, but the
country remains wedded to power generating by Metsamor, whatever
concerns are raised by environmentalists.
The European Union has repeatedly called for the plant to be closed
down, arguing that it poses a threat to the region, classifying
Metsamor's reactors as the `oldest and least reliable' category of all
the 66 Soviet reactors built in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union. In 2004 the European Union's envoy called Metsamor `a danger to
the entire region,' but Armenia later turned down the EU's offer of a
200 million euro loan to finance Metsamor's shutdown, countering that
the Metsamor NPP has undergone considerable upgrades over the past
decade and had been passed as acceptable by the International Atomic
Energy Agency.
Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences President Mahmud Karimov in
September 2011 voiced his country's concerns over Metsamor, stating,
`The European Union also expressed the need to close the plant.
Despite regular inspections of the plant by international
organizations, the results of these inspections are kept secret and no
information is given to Azerbaijan about them.
The countries of the region ` Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia ` have
repeatedly proposed allowing the specialists of these countries to
examine the Metsamor nuclear power plant. But the reports on Metsamor
are not available to these three countries. The Armenian side says ten
different committees have checked the Metsamor NPP in 2011. But the
test results are not available to neighboring countries, that is, the
inspections lack transparency.'
There is also environmental opposition to Metsamor in Armenia itself.
Echoing Karimov's concerns, Yerevan's Greens' Union environmental
group chairman Hakob Sanasarian noted, `There are five earthquake
tectonic breaks (near Metsamor) ' one is 21 miles, another is 10 miles
away, and one is at a distance of less than a third of a mile. And
(yet) today they say it is safe. The one who controls such a facility
would, of course, praise it.'
Opposition to Metsamor is also rising in Turkey. On March 21 during a
visit to IÄ?dır province on Turkey's border with Armenia, Turkey's
Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yıldız said that Turkey
had sent an official appeal to the International Atomic Energy Agency
concerning shutting down Metsamor, telling reporters, `The nuclear
plant, which came online in 1980, has had a lifespan of 30 years. This
plant has expired and should be immediately closed.' Yıldız stressed
that Metsamor is just 10 miles away from Turkey's border, and it was
necessary to bring the issue to international attention to obtain
support for the plant's closure.
Even National Geographic has highlighted Metsamor's environmental
threat, on April 11, 2011 running a story entitled, `Is Armenia's
Nuclear Plant the World's Most Dangerous?'
But far from the Armenian government bowing to international concerns
over the NPP, it has plans to extend its operational life still
further. On July 4 Armenia's Minister of Energy and Natural Resources
Yervand Zakharyan attended a session of the shareholders of the
Armenian Nuclear Power Plant (ANPP) in Metsamor, where the NPP's 2013
operations were reviewed. Zakharyan announced that Armenia and Russia
would sign a document on funding extending the plant's operation and
that furthermore, Armenia had reached agreement with Rosatom on the
provision of nuclear fuel for the plant until 2026 while Rosatom
announced that it had signed documents to construct an additional
power unit at Metsamor.
Armenia's determination to press forward with Metsamor even is at
variance with UN bodies. On June 5 the United Nations Economic and
Social Council's Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) issued a news
release that Parties to the Espoo Convention on Environmental Impact
Assessment in a Transboundary Context and its Protocol on Strategic
Environmental Assessment adopted a declaration on the application of
those instruments to nuclear energy issues which found that `Armenia
was found to be in non-compliance with its obligation to notify about
the planned construction of its NPP in Metsamor.'
Reconstruction work continues in the meantime prior to construction of
a new reactor unit. On Oct. 7 Zakharyan visited Metsamor and told
journalists that the 45-day renovation work at the plant will not
impact electric power supplies and that the $7 million reconstruction
costs would not change the electricity tariff, providing some relief
to Armenian consumers if not the international environmental
community.
As Armenia seems prepared to brush aside international concerns about
extending the NPP's active life another 12 years to 2026, it is
perhaps not coincidental that Metsamor's meaning in Armenian is `black
swamp' or `black quicksand.'
Dr. John C. K. Daly is a non-resident Fellow at the Johns Hopkins
Central Asia Caucasus Institute in Washington DC.
http://www.silkroadreporters.com/2014/11/08/armenias-nuclear-problem/
From: A. Papazian
Nov 8 2014
Armenia's Nuclear Problem
Published by John C. K. Daly
November 8, 2014
The Soviet Union may have imploded more than two decades ago, but
debris from its headlong industrialization drive still litters the
post-Soviet landscape, and nothing more unsettles the population of
the fifteen new nations carved out of the USSR than its nuclear
legacy.
The Caucasus nuclear concerns focus on the region's sole nuclear power
plant (NPP), Armenia's aging Metsamor facility, which provides nearly
40 percent of the country's electricity. Despite concerns about the
elderly NPP from neighboring Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and, farther
afield, the European Union, on Nov. 4 Deputy Minister of Energy and
Natural Resources Ara Simonyan during a parliamentary discussion of
the 2015 draft budget said that Armenia and Russia before the end of
the year will sign an intergovernmental agreement to extend Metsamor's
service life until 2026.
This is a turnaround on previous Armenian government policy, as only
six months earlier it approved extending Metsamor's service life only
until 2016. Concurrent with the announcement Armenian President Serzh
Sargsian said at the Third Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, `We
are closely cooperating with the IAEA on the provision of safety for
the Armenian NPP by consistently complying with the requirements of
the IAEA Technical Document. This is evidenced by the results of the
IAEA's OSART (Operational Safety Review Team) mission.' Azerbaijan's
President Ilham Aliyev was not nearly so sanguine about Metsamor's
safety despite Sargsian's assertions, telling the summit that the NPP
was outmoded and dangerous and should be closed immediately.
Metsamor NPP, which began operations in 1976, is located in one of the
world's most earthquake-prone regions, and is only 19 miles west of
the Armenian capital Yerevan in the Armavir region. Metsamor NPP
contains two VVER-400 V230 376 megawatt nuclear reactors generating
about 2 million kilowatt hours of energy annually, providing about 40
percent of Armenia's electricity.
Many environmentalists regard Metsamor NPP as a rickety, unsafe
accident waiting to happen. Metsamor was the first Soviet NPP designed
to be built in a region of high seismicity. Plans for units 3 & 4 at
the site were abandoned after the 1986 Chernobyl `incident.' The South
Caucasus region is a zone of high seismic activity, as colliding
Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates roil destructive tremors across
the Caucasus, eastern Turkey and northwestern Iran. The Armenian
government closed Metsamor's Unit 1 in February 1989 and Unit 2 the
next month following a massive December 1988 earthquake in Spitak in
the Leninakan-Spitak-Kirovakan area of northern Armenia. The 6.8
Richter scale earthquake, whose epicenter was only 45 miles from
Metsamor, killed more than 25,000, injured 19,000 and rendered 500,000
homeless, leaving much of northern Armenia in ruins and caused more
than an estimated $16 billion in damage.
The facility remained shuttered for seven years until power shortages
forced the Armenian government to bring it back online. In 1993, the
government decided to restart the NPP and, in late 1995, Unit 2 came
back on line. During the winter of 1994-95, Yerevan residents often
had only 1-2 hours of electricity daily. With the restart of Unit 2,
they were expected to have electricity for 10-12 hours daily.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the facility itself is a hostage to the
vicious politics disrupting the Caucasus. Armenia went to war with
Azerbaijan in February 1988 over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh
enclave. During the clash, which lasted until May 1994, Azerbaijan
blockaded roads, rail lines and energy supplies, leading to severe
energy shortages in Armenia. In 1991 pressure to restart Metsamor
increased after a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan was blocked
by a Turkish and Azeri fuel embargo. Since then, thermal power and
hydroelectric energy sources have decreased the blackouts, but the
country remains wedded to power generating by Metsamor, whatever
concerns are raised by environmentalists.
The European Union has repeatedly called for the plant to be closed
down, arguing that it poses a threat to the region, classifying
Metsamor's reactors as the `oldest and least reliable' category of all
the 66 Soviet reactors built in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union. In 2004 the European Union's envoy called Metsamor `a danger to
the entire region,' but Armenia later turned down the EU's offer of a
200 million euro loan to finance Metsamor's shutdown, countering that
the Metsamor NPP has undergone considerable upgrades over the past
decade and had been passed as acceptable by the International Atomic
Energy Agency.
Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences President Mahmud Karimov in
September 2011 voiced his country's concerns over Metsamor, stating,
`The European Union also expressed the need to close the plant.
Despite regular inspections of the plant by international
organizations, the results of these inspections are kept secret and no
information is given to Azerbaijan about them.
The countries of the region ` Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia ` have
repeatedly proposed allowing the specialists of these countries to
examine the Metsamor nuclear power plant. But the reports on Metsamor
are not available to these three countries. The Armenian side says ten
different committees have checked the Metsamor NPP in 2011. But the
test results are not available to neighboring countries, that is, the
inspections lack transparency.'
There is also environmental opposition to Metsamor in Armenia itself.
Echoing Karimov's concerns, Yerevan's Greens' Union environmental
group chairman Hakob Sanasarian noted, `There are five earthquake
tectonic breaks (near Metsamor) ' one is 21 miles, another is 10 miles
away, and one is at a distance of less than a third of a mile. And
(yet) today they say it is safe. The one who controls such a facility
would, of course, praise it.'
Opposition to Metsamor is also rising in Turkey. On March 21 during a
visit to IÄ?dır province on Turkey's border with Armenia, Turkey's
Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yıldız said that Turkey
had sent an official appeal to the International Atomic Energy Agency
concerning shutting down Metsamor, telling reporters, `The nuclear
plant, which came online in 1980, has had a lifespan of 30 years. This
plant has expired and should be immediately closed.' Yıldız stressed
that Metsamor is just 10 miles away from Turkey's border, and it was
necessary to bring the issue to international attention to obtain
support for the plant's closure.
Even National Geographic has highlighted Metsamor's environmental
threat, on April 11, 2011 running a story entitled, `Is Armenia's
Nuclear Plant the World's Most Dangerous?'
But far from the Armenian government bowing to international concerns
over the NPP, it has plans to extend its operational life still
further. On July 4 Armenia's Minister of Energy and Natural Resources
Yervand Zakharyan attended a session of the shareholders of the
Armenian Nuclear Power Plant (ANPP) in Metsamor, where the NPP's 2013
operations were reviewed. Zakharyan announced that Armenia and Russia
would sign a document on funding extending the plant's operation and
that furthermore, Armenia had reached agreement with Rosatom on the
provision of nuclear fuel for the plant until 2026 while Rosatom
announced that it had signed documents to construct an additional
power unit at Metsamor.
Armenia's determination to press forward with Metsamor even is at
variance with UN bodies. On June 5 the United Nations Economic and
Social Council's Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) issued a news
release that Parties to the Espoo Convention on Environmental Impact
Assessment in a Transboundary Context and its Protocol on Strategic
Environmental Assessment adopted a declaration on the application of
those instruments to nuclear energy issues which found that `Armenia
was found to be in non-compliance with its obligation to notify about
the planned construction of its NPP in Metsamor.'
Reconstruction work continues in the meantime prior to construction of
a new reactor unit. On Oct. 7 Zakharyan visited Metsamor and told
journalists that the 45-day renovation work at the plant will not
impact electric power supplies and that the $7 million reconstruction
costs would not change the electricity tariff, providing some relief
to Armenian consumers if not the international environmental
community.
As Armenia seems prepared to brush aside international concerns about
extending the NPP's active life another 12 years to 2026, it is
perhaps not coincidental that Metsamor's meaning in Armenian is `black
swamp' or `black quicksand.'
Dr. John C. K. Daly is a non-resident Fellow at the Johns Hopkins
Central Asia Caucasus Institute in Washington DC.
http://www.silkroadreporters.com/2014/11/08/armenias-nuclear-problem/
From: A. Papazian