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EU halts aid to Armenia over quake-zone nuclear plant

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  • EU halts aid to Armenia over quake-zone nuclear plant

    EU halts aid to Armenia over quake-zone nuclear plant
    Paul Brown in Yerevan

    The Guardian, UK
    June 2 2004

    The European Union has frozen €100m (£67m) in grant aid to Armenia
    because the government has gone back on a deal to close the country's
    only nuclear power station, which is in a highly active earthquake
    zone.

    The Armenian government restarted the Metsamor reactor in 1995 after
    closing it in 1988 when a nearby earthquake killed 25,000 people. The
    move came after four years of power cuts which left most of the
    population without heating through the winters. The plant provides
    one-third of the country's electricity.

    The Russian-built plant has no secondary containment, a safety
    requirement for all modern reactors, and is close to two major
    geological faults where large earthquakes are predicted by the
    country's geological service.

    Nuclear fuel for the plant is flown from Russia into the main civilian
    airport in the capital, Yerevan, because rail links through the
    neighbouring former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan have
    been cut.

    The details of the air shipments are kept secret "to avoid alarming the
    people", according to Areg Galstyan, the deputy minister of energy. He
    opposes closing the reactor, saying that $50m (£30m) has been spent on
    safety improvements at the plant and it is more important to Armenians
    "to keep the electricity on".

    "It was a big mistake to shut the plant in 1988; it created an energy
    crisis and the people and the economy suffered. It is impossible for
    the government to cause the same problem again by closing the plant,"
    he told the Guardian.

    The plant should stay open until 2016, the end of its original design
    life, he said.

    The EU grant was to help Armenia develop alternative energy to the
    440 megawatt reactor, including financing a new gas pipeline from
    neighbouring Iran and upgrading and developing a series of hydropower
    projects. The grant would also have paid for the first phase of
    decommissioning the nuclear plant.

    Alexis Louber, the head of the EU delegation in Yerevan, said the
    £67m of aid would be frozen until the Armenian government gave a
    definite date for the closure of the power station. "In principle,
    nuclear plants should not be built in highly active seismic zones.
    This plant is a danger to the entire region. When the agreement was
    signed in 1998 to close it in 2004, we wanted to close it as quickly
    as possible.

    "We realise that until alternative energy sources are in place it
    is not possible to do that, but it might be possible by 2006, and
    certainly could be by 2010."

    He was also alarmed at the method of delivery of nuclear fuel,
    using Russian transport planes. "It is the same as flying around
    a potential nuclear bomb. It does not happen any where else in the
    world; transportation is by sea or rail."

    Dr Alvaro Antonyan, president of Armenia's National Survey for
    Seismic Protection, claimed that Russian scientists had built the
    power station to resist earthquakes.

    The 1988 earthquake, which measured 6.7 on the Ritcher scale, had not
    damaged the reactor and it was safe, he said. But he accepted that
    larger earthquakes could happen there, and that there was a one in
    2,000 chance of a shock that might destroy the reactor.
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