This story begins in the 1950s. After a couple of decades Volgodonsk, the city in which we are living, was completed. In 1979 the Ministry of Nuclear Energy started to build the Rostovskaya nuclear power plant. Nobody was able to stop the construction of this facility.
(509/10.5025) Women for a Nuclear-Free Don - In April 1986 everybody here felt the consequences of the disaster in Chernobyl. Thus our "green" movement was born in 1987. "Zelenya Volna" (Green Wave) was established among the workers of Atommash, a production plant for nuclear reactors.
In 1988, a meeting of environmentalists at a local chemical plant was organized in Volgodonsk.
Also, two women participated: the chemichal engineer V. Matsarenko and the journalist L. Ruppental.
One of them began to talk about the Rostovskaya nuclear power plant (RoNPP). These two women
changed the minds of all people present.
On November 19, 1988, in Rostov-na-Donu the first-round table about the RoNPP with the people from
Rostav-na-Donu, Volgodonsk and Tsimlyansk had been organized. Among the 106 participants who
attended the meeting were at least 80 women. One man had remarked that the main part of the
participants were women and another man answered that the women's activities were based on their
sexual frustration. Everybody laughed, but later the pro-nuclear people used this "argument" many
times.
In the autumn of 1989 the Tsymlyanskiy and Volgodonskiy regions passed the decision to stop the
construction and to prevent the operation of the RoNPP. In June 1990, the Oblastnoy Soviet
(regional parliament) also took this decision. But the construction continued.
On May 15, 1990, the women's council of Atommash announced the establishment of the Regional Civil
Committee (RCC) for closing the RoNPP. After one month, the committee had united more than 40,000
people from the Rostovskaya and Volgogradskaya regions. After the Chernobyl disaster women became
aware of the dangers of the "peaceful atom" and a possible next catastrophe. Too much emphasis on
the technological development within our civilization could be catastrophic because of the neglect
of the cultural and spiritual values and awareness.
On June 1, 1990, women organized the action "Defend our children"; children put their pictures on the fence of the RoNPP. From the plant's gate a "life" line of people was formed. The RCC called the workers to start a strike. A lot of workers from different enterprises in the region intended to do it. Then the RCC sent their representatives with signatures against the RoNPP to Moscow.
On August 6, representatives of different enterprises came to block the road to the RoNPP. The police came soon and people were afraid the police would break the blockade. But fortunately several buses from Kotelnikovo, a little town not far from the power plant came and brought... women. The women distributed some food. They saw the police and made a second life line. Later it became clear these women prevented a breaking up. Nobody from the police expected so many women and refused to fight with them.
Then a Soviet ministry sent a letter with its intention to stop the construction of the RoNPP. The people decided to delay the blockade to September 1990. On September 3, the next action included a blockade of all roads, railways and the shipping canal to the plant. The government ordered a stop to the construction immediately. The action was postponed, but the government cheated us.
We realized who made the decision for this site: the goverment, which lives thousands of
kilometers away and not the local people. During the years 1992-1998, the nuclear lobby tried
several times to restart the construction. As a consequence the local people began to support the
environmental movement.
The head of the regional administration declared a local referendum was needed. The local
parliament passed a law prescribing a referendum which could be initiated only if 330,000
signatures were collected within a month! Negotiations with the Ministry of Nuclear Energy
(Minatom) about the completion of the nuclear power plant were started.
In 1997, the Rainbow Keepers together with local activists decided to block the road to the power
plant and organized an international action camp. The site workers crushed the blockade and injured
several people; this action resulted in many international media reports.
After the Chernobyl disaster, everybody realized that nuclear energy was a real threat to all
peoples; not only the present generation but all succeeding generations. The question is: do we
need nuclear power and what is the real cost of this energy? The answer appears to be a secret.
We've been told that this energy is the cheapest one, but this is not true. It's clear that a state
doesn't have any moral right to develop the nuclear industry if it doesn't pay for all the debts
after Chernobyl. The Earth is our common home and nobody can be protected from a global
environmental catastrophe.
The state spends money, time and people's lives to produce weapons. It kills nature -seas, lakes,
forests-, makes people starving and makes scientists think only about war. The task of the present
power in Russia seems to be to shut the mouths of the environmentalists. We have to fight the state
to defend our rights. Eight years have passed since the decision to stop the construction of the
RoNPP. Now the Volgodonsk administration has asked the government to restart the construction,
without a referendum; at the same time, more than 80% of the local people are against the
Rostovskaya nuclear power plant.
Thus, the fight has to be continued.
Source and contact: Irina Reznikova, head of the environmental movement "Zelenaya Volna",
Women for a Nuclear-Free Don.
Tel: +7-86-392 35229
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