Nuclear Waste and Pollution Conference in Vilnius 2011

• international Nuclear Waste & Pollution Conference in Vilnius (LT) probably on December 6-8, 2011
• title: "Nuclear Power - Challenges for the Environment, Health, Economy and Legislation"
• the idea for this conference was developed at the Baltic Sea Info Tour 2010 stop in Belarus

CONFERENCE
NUCLEAR WASTE – NUCLEAR POLLUTION – NO SOLUTION

Background

This year was the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. And in that same year, the accident occurred at Fukushima. Chernobyl and Fukusima have shown to the world, that nuclear power is not safe and can cause radioactive catastrophes.

Many European countries are actively debating the down of nuclear energy. Despite this, Belarus and Russia have declared that they would build a nuclear power plant, signed the agreement about construction of the Belarusian NPP and claimed, that the Belarusian nuclear power plant would be safer than Fukushima.

The three countries in the region - Belarus, Lithuania and Russia - continue the polemic about their NPP projects (Ostrovets, Visaginas NPP and Baltic NPP) and unsolved problems of NPP projects of their neighbours. The decommissioning and disassembling of the Ignalina nuclear power plant started already, but Belarus had not seen the EIA of that and has complained about it to Lithuania. Lithuania started to complain to the Committee of the Espoo Convention about the Belarusian NPP. Belarus says, they will start to do the same towards the new Lithuanian NPP.

That’s why we decided to organize a Conference in Vilnius, dedicated to the general problems of nuclear power - the nuclear waste and emissions, as well as to the local problems of the three NPP projects.

Description

• Place: Vilnius
• Dates: December 6-8, 2011
• Time frame: about 3 days
• Host co-organizers: Public Environmental Commission on Belarus Nuclear Power Plant Environment Impact Assessment, Atgaja (Lithuania)
• AIMS:
  • raising awareness about the unsolved problems of nuclear waste and radioactive pollution as well as about the health effects of nuclear contamination
  • media outreach on the issues, mentioned above
  • put pressure on the authorities / states to stop the NPP construction projects in Belarus, Lithuania and Kaliningrad region
  • antinuclear movement mobilization
• Target Groups:
  • mass-media
  • decision-makers (representatives of Belarus, Lithuania and Kaliningad region)
  • the persons influencing the decision making process (specialists of Ministries, Institutes of Academy of Sciences, Universities, experts)
  • NGOs, representatives of political parties and initiative groups, focused on the NPP issues in Belarus, Lithuania and Kaliningrad region
• Participants: about 100 (speakers and main participants of discussions)
  • key experts on nuclear waste, radioactive pollution, emissions issues, radiological risks, medicine, environment
  • representatives of NGOs, antinuclear activists
  • representatives of scientific and technology community, universities
  • politicians, lawyers, MP's from different countries
  • others
• Format: opening and closing plenary meetings, presentations, working groups, discussion panels, etc