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Gfeenpeace Vladjvwtok Report 

 6 November 1991 



927-III, or Pavlovsk went unanswered. One naval ofiBcer, however, said the Paviovsk submarine 

 base was constructed in the 1960s without a thought to the future, and today it is an 'ugly child.' 



The Navy said prior to the 1985 the waters around Peter the Great Bay were Cree of any 

 radioactivity beyond what occurred naturally, and today the sittiation is normal as well Untfl 

 1989, the military took their own sediment samples and analyzed them. Now the Navy takes the 

 samples and hands them over to the regional Hydromet office for analysis. The Hydromet also 

 claim the situation is normal 



Vn. Conclusions 



A. Radiophobia 



In the past five years, there has been a history of strong anti-nuclearism in the Primorski! 

 and Khaborvosk regions. Local residents have: 



- stopped plans for a civil nuclear-power station in the Primorskii Territory; 



• opposed Navy plans to dismantle decommissioned submarines in the Sovetskaya Gavan 

 area (which lead to cancellation of these plans); 



- criticized plans to offload reactor cores from decommissioned submarines in Vladimir 

 Bay, a relatively unknown submarine facility, located between Vladivostok and Sovetskaya 

 Gavan; 



- prevented the docking of the nuclear-powered merchant ship Sevmorput at several ports 

 in the area; 



- protested the military's handling of the clean-up of the 1985 accident 



There are no signs that this opposition is slacking oEL One Bolshoi Kamen city people's 

 deputy is planning to take the military to the State Arbitrator's office in the coming months to 

 seek 23 million roubles for more clean-up of the 1985 accident, paving roads in the irradiated 

 region, and social compensation for the people who live in the Shkotovo region. 



The military is very concerned about this 'radiophobia.' In general, the Soviet military is 

 caught in a serious dilemma as it tries to reshape its role. To begin to regain the public trust, it 

 needs to provide more information to the public about its past and present activities. But its past 

 history of environmental degradation is so bad, the more information the military provides, the 

 more angry the public may become. 



It is not clear how this dilemma will be resolved. Public concerns were one of the reasons 

 Greenpeace was given unprecedented access and information about the 1985 accident. Local 

 environmental officials expressed surprise about how much information was provided. But the 

 Navy officers also feared this information would be further used to agitate the populatioa They 

 were very reluctant to discuss any procedures or problems at other nuclear facilities in the region. 



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