Atomic Threats Around the Baltic Sea book project

As a result of the 2010 info tour around the Baltic Sea a group of people is preparing and investigating to create a new book on atomic threats around the Baltic Sea. It is supposed to become a kind of reference book particularly on nuclear companies and facilities providing a brief overview of the plant and technical data, offering contacts to active anti-nuclear groups and providing links to the websites of critics and the operators.

The book was meant to be published at the end of 2014, but due to the dimensions of necessary investigations tasks it has been postponed by at least one year. To meet this goal, we have a few meetings in the "real world" besides the usage of a specific email listserve to communicate about the project. The last meetings took place in the project house in Döbeln on October 14-20, 2013. Earlier we met on September 24-30, 2012, on December 27, 2011 to January 3, 2012, on March 19-25, 2012, on June 6-11, 2012, on April 22-28, 2013, on July 3-9, 2013, on September 21-22, 2013, on October 14-20, 2013, on December 8-14, 2013, March 3-9, 2014, May 5-11, 2014, September 20-24, 2014, on November 3-9, 2014 and on March 2-8, 2015. The next project meeting hasn't been scheduled yet, but will probably take place again in the project house in Döbeln.

Aims of the project
We want to use and extend our knowledge about nuclear issues around the Baltic Sea, strengthen the regional anti-nuclear networks and support local groups as well as other organizations by providing a well prepared reference book. The objective is to gove an overview on - in the best case - all atomic facilities within the water shed of the Baltic Sea. Thus, anti-nuclear campaigners and organizers should be enabled to prepare their projects or campaigns properly as they will easily find the information they need or at least the links to other information sources.

Another objective is to support local struggles against nuclear projects and developments by providing a good database of knowledge and contacts. Eventually, the general anti-nuclear work is supposed to be fostered by illustrating the impacts of different atomic plants and moves on a complex system of nature, ecology and human society as it is presented by the Baltic Sea region. This should help to stress the threats of nuclear power also in general.

Structure of the book
After a number of background articles on the radioactive pollution of the Baltic Sea and the impacts of the Chernobyl Desaster, the reference book will start. It will be separated into the countries around the Baltic Sea (including Belarus as it is part of the sea's water shed). For each country an article will introduce the national atomic policy and the current state of affairs. Then one page will give an overview of each atomic facility in this region. At the end an appendix will show the names of proposed sites for uranium exploration and mining.

Each article on an atomic facility will include an introduction to the plant, technical details, contact information to organizations fighting the facility and links to website of critics and operators. Besides that a photo will show the plant or the area. All in all we will cover commercial nuclear reactors, research reactors, nuclear waste sites and waste treatment plants, other atomic facilities and proposed or operating uranium mines. Even decommissioned sites are supposed to be included by the reference book.

Technical information
The book will be published by the SeitenHieb Verlag, which will also provide the ISBN numbers for it. The first printed versions will be written in German and English. It is planned to translate the book soon also in other language found around the Baltic Sea. It will be discussed later if it will be possible to print these other language versions, too.

Cost of the project
As of the beginning of May 2015, we don't know the exact costs for the production of the book yet. There are already ideas of financing it, but this will be discussed in detail in the next meeting. Basically, we want to get public funding to cover at least a share of the production costs.

Current setting
At the moment we are for instance preparing the text for the articles on the Olkiluoto NPP (FIN), Greifswald NPP (D), ZLN Lubmin (D), ZAW Lubmin (D), Polish Research Reactor and the Jezioro Żarnowieckie NPP (PL). Actually these reports were supposed to be finished already in 2014. A basic version of an article on the Talvivaara mining site in Finland has been provided already.

Your contributions will help to realize this project
We need contributions from activists and experts from Belarus, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden. Most of the information available in the internet is provided in the native languages, and it is easier for local people to investigate in their mother tongue. The book will cover all nuclear facilities and companies situated within the water shed of the Baltic Sea. You can check the map with the water shed to figure out what parts of Russia and Germany are included. All other countries mentioned above are almost completely part of the Baltic Sea's water shed. A collection of all facilities we found so far is listed on the webpage of the Nuclear Baltic Map. Your contributions to the book, and also your participation in the process of creating it, will be very welcome! Write to [mailto:contactATnuclear-heritage.net contact AT nuclear-heritage.net].

History of the preparation process
27.12.2011-03.01.2012 This was the first meeting of Atomic Threats Around the Baltic Sea book project. On the first day we were briefly introduced to the idea and aims of the project. After that we were introduced to the structure of the book and started to share tasks. Each of us took several of them. Some participants decided to make a research about nuclear facilities in certain countries, some preferred to choose certain facilities that are located in different countries. This was the longest part of the whole meeting, actually.

Since the project has a large scale the participants can not do everything by themselves. Thus we shared our suggestions about which other people could be involved in the project. After this we set working hours for the whole week - from 10 AM to 6 PM - and started to work. At the end of the meeting we made a report on state of affairs and set the dates for the next meeting.

19.03.-25.03.2012 [ To be written by someone else ]

06.06.-11.06.2012 Apart from research doing and reports on state of affairs this meeting pretty much consisted of discussion about financial and distribution issues. We talked about possible project costs, which seem to be quite high because this book is intended as a voluminous mini encyclopaedia: hard back, with many coloured images. We discussed both printing costs and possible book prices.

The next essential topic was distribution. The book should be distributed in all countries it is covering. The current problem is that we do not have distributors in such small countries as Estonia, Latvia and do not have enough distributors in bigger countries (for instance, in Germany). Also the distribution process in general was discussed: how many books we would like to distribute in each country, what would be the best way how to deliver them there.

On the last day of the meeting the participants made another report on state of affairs.

24.09.-30.09.2012 From all meetings, this was the toughest one. The deeper you dig, the more you find. Several new nuclear facilities in the Baltic Sea region were found, which means additional research and involvement of more people in the project. Also we had to go through all nuclear facilities already mentioned in the Nuclear Baltic Map in order to see their state of affairs. In some cases we had to re-distribute tasks as the people responsible for them had decided to leave the project or had not given any response for months.

After this big organizational meeting we continued to work on our tasks. Working day started at 10 AM and was supposed to last until 6 PM. In reality, we continued to work, usually until midnight or later. On Friday, Sept 28, one of the meeting participants presented her articles about Salaspils Research Reactor, radioactive waste storage "Radons" and atomic policy in Latvia. Other participants went through them and gave their comments and suggestions.

On Saturday, Sept 29, was the Uranium Action Day, in which we also took part. The Project House was decorated with banners and radioactive waste barrels. An info table was set up and the film "Uranium – Is It A Country?" was shown.

22.-28.04.2013 During this meeting we continued our researches. Articles about Salaspils Research Reactor (LV), radioactive waste repository "Radons" (LV) and atomic policy in Latvia, which were commented in the last meeting were revised and presented for commenting again. It was done by sending these articles to the book project's mailing list. Also in the same e-mail a list of other articles that needs to be read and commented was sent.

On Friday, April 26, an activist who will prepare an article about Oskarshamn NPP (SE) joined us. Unfortunately he could stay in the Project House only for one day. Two other persons who had confirmed participation in this meeting had to cancel it through unforeseen circumstances. During the meeting we had three Skype conferences: on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday with people who had recently joined the project. We mainly discussed the project's practicalities with them.

Another important thing that was done during this meeting was finishing of the project application for funding. The application will be submitted under the "Youth in Action" programme on May 3.

03.-09.07.2013 This meeting was used to clarify the schedule of the project in August and September, as our project application was granted and we would receive funding starting on August 3, 2013. We also discussed tasks and responsibilities to be shared with each other. There were discussions on challenges and realistic assessments on project goals.

'Find more reports in the minutes of the meetings linked in the top of this page. Here in the list on the bottom only brief summaries of some events are provided that had no actual minutes.'