ST. PETERSBURG (Bellona Web): At 11:00 local time (GMT+3), this morning, 28 October, the trial against Aleksandr Nikitin resumed after being paused last Friday. Today's proceedings will mainly be devoted to the hearing of two expert witnesses. The defence will ask for the court to be opened to the public.
The two expert witnesses being questioned today, V. A. Bavkin and A. A. Ogoltsov, made an economic analysis of the damage done by the claimed secret information allegedly disclosed by Nikitin through the Northern Fleet report.
Expert analysis supposes increased risk of nuclear terrorism
Unfortunately, the specific contents of the analysis has not been made public. It is known however, that it is partly based on the clean-up costs at naval base Andreeva Bay, where a wet storage facility for spent nuclear fuel fell to pieces due to bad engineering in the 80's. There were severe leakages of radioactivity to the environment in the years between 1982 and 1987, and the clean-up costs amounted to 5 million rubles (according to the Bellona report).
Considering an increased risk of nuclear terrorism with comparable results due to the information revealed in the Bellona report, the alleged experts have extrapolated on the Andreeva Bay expences. In total, the damage done by the report is stipulated to 4,500 million 1996 rubles (less than. $1,000,000). The mathematical method used by the experts in their calculations was supposedly created ad-hoc, and this particular expert commission, consisting of people from Military Unit No. 30895, spent three days on their analyses (formed on 17 September 1996, their conclusions are dated 19 of the same month).
No serious consequences
"These analyses do not pertain to the chapters of the report that are included in the indictment. Therefore, there is no valid foundation for the accusations of disclosure of state secrets with serious consequences, that refer to chapter 2.3.3 in the Northern Fleet," says Bellona's legal advisor Jon Gauslaa.
"It is in any case absurd to claim that the 'disclosure' has had serious consequences for the security of the Russian State," Gauslaa adds, referring to the total damage stipulated, regardless of the validity of the calculations behind the number. "One million dollar is an insubstantial sum when compared to the Russian defence budget."
The use of Andreeva Bay as a referent for stipulating possible economic damage caused by an anticipated increased risk of terror attacks is in itself ironic, as the storage facility in question fell to pieces without any outside help. Thus, a similar analysis may be carried out to denominate the costs of not commencing immediate clean-up of all the ageing storage facilities and nuclear installations in the area. It should be noted that radioactive contaminated water is still leaking from the old spent fuel storage (Building no. 5), which is located some 200 metres from the shore.
Since Bellona published its first report on Andreeva Bay in 1994, many international projects have been negotiated in order to find solutions to the spent nuclear fuel problems. In the end of May this year Norway and Russia signed a framework agreement on nuclear waste clean-up from decommissioned submarines. There is also a military cooperation going on between Norway, Russia and USA, that covers some of the spent nuclear fuel problems. In addition, EU supports attempts to clean up Andreeva Bay. Andreeva Bay is located in the Litsa Fjord, some 45 kilometres from the Norwegian border.
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