An environmentalist movement sprang up, calling for the shutdown of the Metsamor reactors. The authorities backed down, and the two reactors were turned off on February 25 and March 18, 1989.
Environmentalists defeated the Soviet Union? You would think that would have made the newspapers.
Areg Danagoulian is an associate professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT
Your sacrasm reveals your ignorance, not an exaggeration or a hole in the story.
Yes, environmentalist movements in 1989 were all across the country, and were significant. It was 2 years into Perestroyka and Glasnost [1] policy, and such things were not restricted from discussion, and 1989 was the year when a lot of non-CPSU new local politicians were elected in local councils and the soviet deputy council [2].
In my region, people would protest a projected Katun river dam [3]. It's not clear, whether the pressure stopped it, or financial shortages, but it was noteable -- at least I as 1st grader saw it discussed everywhere.
To add to that, Chernobyl disaster and the subsequent coverup attempt clearly showed that Glasnost lacked actual substance. It was the one of the main reasons behind lifting the censorship regime (since the 1987 the press was essentially free to write about anything, and did so), and a major contributor to allowing competing factions inside the party. Nemtsov in particular became a prominent figure after his Chernobyl-related activism.
However, claiming that environmentalists took down the whole Union is downright silly. Yes, the fears of the crumbling infra and coverups, Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Spitak earthquake, and Ufa train disaster dominated the media of the late USSR (and especially Armenia, due to the Spitak earthquake), but that was only a small factor, the reasons were much more fundamental.
It's been discussed since 1985, with implementation attempts in 1986 before the Chernobyl disaster, but only accepted as the official policy (Glasnost-Perestroika-Acceleration) in 1987. I still have a Uborevich-Borovsky's satirical comic book published in 1986 with Glasnost taking probably one third of it.
To add to that, environmental opposition to a Soviet mining project was actually a key trigger for the Baltic independence movement (hence, in part, the dissolution of the USSR),
- "The Phosphorite War (Estonian: Fosforiidisõda) is the name given to a late-1980s environmental campaign in the then-Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, against the opening of large phosphorite mines in the Virumaa region[...] In Estonia it is regarded as a catalyst that led to the destabilization and dissolution of the Soviet government in Estonia.[3]"
This was a green movement perceived as useful idiots by the empire, that was in its death throes already.
Accepting this pressure was a way to save face, by feigning to accept the lie that all power plants were dangerous, in spite of differences in design and management.
The empire is not a person to perceive something -- inside the communist party and government, there were many of points of view on the eco-movements. The "empire" had no single stance on the question.
How save? Chernobyl's exclusion zone today is 2600 km², it initially affected 150000 km², Armenia is what? 40000 km². One well planned sabotage or airstrike, and the energy independence is not only gone but also an eventual long term disaster for much percentage of that land..
> It is now clear that Western use of natural gas and petroleum from aggressive dictatorships—which use cash flows from oil and gas sales to reinforce and expand their hold on power—has backfired badly.
This feels awkwardly over repeated today. Embargos as always of course don't work, still most of the West more easily than all doomsayers expected reoriented (while they ideally could have been off that much dependence already longer).. there is enough market to other countries and also circumventing embargos. Do the Armenians btw dig the uranium out of their soil and refine it?
You choose to ignore one key difference between Chernobyl and the Armenian plants: the size of the exclusion zone in Ukraine was large because of the mad graphite combustion. As the plants in Armenia didn't have an insane design, no matter how well placed a strike the worst you'd get is a meltdown, like the Fukushima situation that killed nobody except collaterals of the rushed evacuation...
that disaster will continue killing people far into the future with the way it was handled at nearly every step of the recovery. Tepco was great at playing the victim and spinning every facet of PR at their disposal to avoid looking like jerks.
the 'Fukushima situation that killed nobody' comment is a direct reflection of how well Tepco played it reputationally, even if they did a piss-poor job of handling it practically.
Thankfully the whole thing wasn't entirely unjust[1].
Last I checked, Wikipedia is not entirely accurate here. Yes, the worker had worked at the Fukushima plant since 1980, and his cancer was regarded as a work-related injury for insurance purposes. However, it was not actually linked to the accident and such a link would be very difficult to prove.
"A decade after the triple tragedy that occurred in Japan in March 2011, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) said that future health effects, e.g. cancer directly related to radiation exposure are unlikely to be discernible, in its 2020 Report launched today."
There is still melted reactor in the ground, nothing is "cleaned up" we just dont really talk about it. Much like Chernobyl this is going to be a "generational" project for Japan.
Its handling of contaminated materials remains "questionable".
The reason we get less coverage than Chernobyl is that Japan doesn't have its hand out for money and technical support as Ukraine did to get the latest covering built.
Environmentalists defeated the Soviet Union? You would think that would have made the newspapers.
Areg Danagoulian is an associate professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT