27.09.2007 // Information Department of Leningrad NPP

A group of journalists covering problems of ecology have visited Leningrad NPP

They showed us all we wanted to see (one of the journalists said)

A group of St.Petersburg and Leningrad region journalists covering the problems of ecology and environment protection visited Leningrad NPP on Sept 26.

The visit was part of the seminar “Journalism, Ecology and Development of Nuclear Power Industry” organized by Rosatom’s Regional Public Information Center and Public Council with a view to enhance the mass media’s awareness of the problems of use of nuclear energy.

All of the journalists visited a nuclear power plant for the first time in their lives. Local specialists showed them the unit control board, the machine and reactor buildings, the guests saw how one operates a reactor and heard how turbines work. It was a great experience. Now they know how hard it is to produce the light they have in their houses every day and what a responsible job it is to operate a reactor, a turbine or any other complex system.

After the excursion the journalists met with the deputy chief engineer of the plant Valery Moskovsky. They asked him about the radiation situation at Leningrad NPP and in Sosnovy Bor, they wanted to know when the existing units would be stopped, where spent fuel was stored, where and when the new units would be built, if the plant had a problem with personnel recruitment, what would happen to St.Petersburg if LNPP was stopped.

Moskovsky told the journalists where and how the new LNPP-2 would be built. He said that the new plant would have four units 1150 MW each and would work for 50 years. He told them about the advantages of WWER and RBMK reactors.

The guests also visited the plant’s training center and the local full-scale simulator to see how the personnel learned to operate the units and to respond to emergencies.

The chief editor of Society and Ecoilogy newspaper Sergey Liskovky said: “Today, we have seen all we wanted to see. We have learned lots of interesting things about NPPs and now we have counter-arguments against pseudo-ecologists criticizing nuclear energy.”

I think that the visit was quite fruitful. Now the journalists know how NPP works and what nuclear power engineering is and will certainly show more objectivity in their articles about nuclear energy. As regards Leningrad NPP, it has proved its openness and readiness to cooperate with ecologists.

Note

Since Apr 1 2002 Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant has been the branch of Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Russian State Concern for Production of Electric and Thermal Power at Nuclear Power Plants” (Rosenergoatom Concern).

The plant has four units with RBMK-1000 reactors with a total capacity of 4000 MW. It employs 5,977 people: 5,635 industrial employees and 342 non-industrial employees and pays them 26,695 RUR a month: 27,306 RUR to industrial personnel and 11,380 RUR to non-industrial personnel.

Nadezhda Mikheyeva