Environment situation in the Barents Sea region

Motion for a Resolution

Doc. 7858

30 June 1997

presented by Mr Wolfgang Behrendt and others

1. The environment situation in the Barents Sea region gives serious cause for concern, in particular on account of the huge risk both to humans and nature from radioactive waste.

2.The provinces of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk contain the world's greatest concentration of nuclear reactors. Investigations by the Norwegian environmental organisation Bellona found that there were 182 operational nuclear reactors there and a further 135 decommissioned reactors predominantly from atomic submarines.

3. Because of the Russian Federation's financial and economic difficulties, maintaining The Russian Northern Fleet with its 84 atomic submarines and two nuclear-powered battleships and disposing of the attendant radioactive waste pose an almost insuperable problem.

4. At the moment radioactive waste is inadequately stored at 15 different sites. In a number of ship graveyards around Murmansk there are numerous atomic submarines that have been taken out of service and left to rot.

5. Necessary decommissioning of ships and proper disposal of solid and fluid radioactive waste bring considerable dangers, which extend far beyond the immediate area.

6. Although regions adjacent to the Barents Sea have joined forces in a Barents Euro-Arctic Region transborder co-operation project, this is not a problem that can be solved at the purely regional level.

7. If the situation is not to get out of hand, active international support, particularly financial support, is necessary. The Assembly consequently calls on the relevant institutions to give appropriate aid.

8. Improved intermediate storage capacity for fluid and solid nuclear waste in suitable geological formations from which pollution cannot leak into the groundwater is urgently necessary. If there is no prospect of this, the danger is that the dumping of radioactive waste at sea, halted in 1991, will resume.

9. So far military installations have largely fallen outside civilian control. The Council of Europe should press for the establishment of a civil international agency to supervise all sites, whether civilian or military, at which radioactive waste is stored, since the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) founded in 1957 is responsible only for inspection of civilian sites.

Signed: (1)

Behrendt, Germany, SOC

Antretter, Germany, SOC

Barsony, Hungary, SOC

Billing, Sweden, EDG

Blattmann, Norway, SOC

Bog�r, Hungary, EDG

Bonet Casas, Andorra, LDR

Bribosia-Picard, Belgium, EPP

Brunhart, Liechtenstein, EPP

De Carolis, Italy, NR

Degn, Denmark, SOC

Dumitrescu, Romania, SOC

Elo, Finland, SOC

Gusenbauer, Austria, SOC

Gylys, Lithuania, SOC

Haack, Germany, SOC

Horn, Germany, SOC

Kirilov, Bulgaria, SOC

Koucky, Czech Republic, EDG

Leers, Netherlands, EPP

Lucyga, Germany, SOC

Sceberras Trigona, Malta, SOC

Schloten, Germany, SOC

Squarcialupi, Italy, SOC

Stepova, Czech Republic, SOC

Terborg, Germany, SOC

Turini, Italy, EDG

Note: 1 SOC: Socialist Group

EPP: Group of the European People's Party

EDG: European Democratic Group

LDR: Liberal, Democratic and Reformers Group

UEL: Group of the Unified European Left

NR: Not registered in any political group