Russia And The Environment

Russia and the environment

2/22/07 12:40 PM

Chrenobyl During the soviet era they largely ignored environemental issues •Modernizers •Preservationists oTake a longer perspective and focus on protecting the environment Environmentalists lost their argument under stalin and their arguments were not subject to debate •Soviet Russia however made themselves the paragon of environmentl protection •GOSPLAN-in charge of managing environmental issues, the problem ,however was hat one ministry could not manage all the problems, does centralized management work? Nort for the environment •The state is never the watchdog for the environment •Production quotas almost always overrode environmental issues •Then the market economy comes •In the 90s Russia switches to a market economy but the extent of environmental damage does not change What happenes when environments are not protected? •You lose resources •Massive health problems •Pollution of lakes rivers and seas an lack of clean drinking water •Forests are devastated •The Arral sea oBetween 1960-90 the sea lost half of its volume in water oPollution and waste create unforeseen effects oEventually it leads to the Lorax oNo longer can the industry function around the sea anymore Chrenobyl •At 1:23 am 1986 decided to hold an experiment for a new engine oCaused a steam explosion that released the covering tf the reactor and realeased nuclear dust into the air oWhen the core breach began the safety precautions that had put into place were taken down oIn the original construction they were supposed to have built a dome around the reactor but never did oThe scale of the tragedy was augmented by the lack of preparation oPoor equipment made it impossible for workers to detect the high levels of radiation

They didn’t even know what as happening oOne of thme wore any protextive gear and most of them were would die of radiation poisoning oFireme were not told how dangerous the situation it was oThe explosion threw into thei air not just nuclear dust but also radioactive materials oThe residents of the area were not informed that anything was wrong oEvening the next day evacuation started oA government comitte comes in and by then took 24 hours to decide that maybe they should evacuate oIn order to reduce baggage , the people were told that they would be coming back oTe water that had been pumped into the reactive building hd run down to the space underneath the floor and this was made worse oSoldiers and workers were sent to prevent a thermonuclear explosion All of these people were killed by radioactive poisoning oBy dec 1986 they finally got around t building a huge sarcophagus around the power plant oAll of Europe was put at risk oof the effected by the disaster The biggest problem was that the sviet union decided ot to talk about it but the first people to say that this was actually going on were the Swedes The soviet government’s firt reaction was to hide it, only when confronted with proof did they admit it’

2/22/07 12:40 PM

2/22/07 12:40 PM