Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by a group of environmental activists. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its diversity" and focuses its campaigning on worldwide issues such as climate change, deforestation, overfishing, commercial whaling, genetic engineering, anti-war and anti-nuclear issues. It uses direct action, advocacy, research, and ecotage to achieve its goals.
Statoil ASA was a Norwegian petroleum company established in 1972. It merged with the oil and gas division of Norsk Hydro in 2007 and was known as StatoilHydro until 2009, when the name was changed back to Statoil ASA. The brand Statoil was retained as a chain of fuel stations owned by StatoilHydro. Statoil was the largest petroleum company in the Nordic countries. In the 2013 Fortune 500, Statoil was ranked as the 39th -largest company in the world. While Statoil was listed on both the Oslo Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange, the Norwegian state still held majority ownership, with 64%. The company's headquarters are located in Norway's oil capital Stavanger. The name Statoil was a truncated form of the State's oil (company).
Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. As of August 2022, primary activities are nuclear waste processing and storage and nuclear decommissioning. Former activities included nuclear power generation from 1956 to 2003, and nuclear fuel reprocessing from 1952 to 2022.
A nuclear and radiation accident is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as "an event that has led to significant consequences to people, the environment or the facility." Examples include lethal effects to individuals, large radioactivity release to the environment, or a reactor core melt. The prime example of a "major nuclear accident" is one in which a reactor core is damaged and significant amounts of radioactive isotopes are released, such as in the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
K-159 was a Project 627A "Kit" nuclear-powered submarine that served in the Northern Fleet of the Soviet Navy from 1963–89. Her keel was laid down on 15 August 1962 at the Severodvinsk "Sevmash" Shipyard No. 402. She was launched on 6 June 1963, and commissioned on 9 October 1963.
Dounreay is a small settlement and the site of two large nuclear establishments on the north coast of Caithness in the Highland area of Scotland. It is on the A836 road nine miles west of Thurso.
The Mayak Production Association is one of the largest nuclear facilities in the Russian Federation, housing a reprocessing plant. The closest settlements are Ozyorsk to the northwest and Novogornyi to the south.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is a non-departmental public body of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero formed by the Energy Act 2004. It evolved from the Coal and Nuclear Liabilities Unit of the Department of Trade and Industry. It came into existence during late 2004, and took on its main functions on 1 April 2005. Its purpose is to deliver the decommissioning and clean-up of the UK's civil nuclear legacy in a safe and cost-effective manner, and where possible to accelerate programmes of work that reduce hazard.
Alexander Konstantinovich Nikitin is a Russian former submarine officer and nuclear safety inspector turned environmentalist. In 1996 he was accused of espionage for revealing the perils of decaying nuclear submarines, and in 2000 he became the first Russian to be completely acquitted of a charge of treason in the Soviet or post-Soviet era.
The Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, or THORP, is a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, England. THORP is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and operated by Sellafield Ltd, the site licensee.
The New Safe Confinement is a structure put in place in 2016 to confine the remains of the number 4 reactor unit at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in Ukraine, which was destroyed during the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The structure also encloses the temporary Shelter Structure (sarcophagus) that was built around the reactor immediately after the disaster. The New Safe Confinement is designed to prevent the release of radioactive contaminants, protect the reactor from external influence, facilitate the disassembly and decommissioning of the reactor, and prevent water intrusion.
Nuclear decommissioning is the process leading to the irreversible complete or partial closure of a nuclear facility, usually a nuclear reactor, with the ultimate aim at termination of the operating licence. The process usually runs according to a decommissioning plan, including the whole or partial dismantling and decontamination of the facility, ideally resulting in restoration of the environment up to greenfield status. The decommissioning plan is fulfilled when the approved end state of the facility has been reached.
The nuclear-powered Charlie-I Soviet submarine K-320 had a reactor accident prior to commissioning while under construction. The event occurred on January 18, 1970. The submarine was repaired, commissioned on September 15, 1971, and was stricken in 1994.
Norway is a large energy producer, and one of the world's largest exporters of oil. Most of the electricity in the country is produced by hydroelectricity. Norway is one of the leading countries in the electrification of its transport sector, with the largest fleet of electric vehicles per capita in the world.
Equinor ASA is a Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger, Norway. It is primarily a petroleum company operating in 36 countries with additional investments in renewable energy. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Equinor was ranked as the 169th-largest public company in the world. In 2023, the company was ranked 52nd in the same list. As of 2021, the company has 21,126 employees.
Frederic Hauge is a Norwegian environmental activist. He is head of the Bellona Foundation which he co-founded in 1986. Bellona is an international environmental NGO based in countries such as Russia, the United States, Norway and also the European Union.
Bellona – St. Petersburg was a branch of the Norwegian environmental rights organization Bellona Foundation.
The decommissioning of Russian nuclear-powered vessels is an issue of major concern to the United States and to Scandinavian countries near Russia. From 1950 to 2003, the Soviet Union and its major successor state, Russia, constructed the largest nuclear-powered navy in the world, with more ships than all other navies combined: 248 submarines, four Kirov-class battlecruisers, and a missile test ship, as well as nine icebreakers. Many were or are powered by two reactors each, bringing the total to 468 reactors.
Thomas Nilsen is a Norwegian journalist who has extensively covered oil drilling in the Arctic region. He was editor of the BarentsObserver, a Norwegian Arctic online newspaper based in Kirkenes, for six years before he was sacked in 2015. Norway’s public service broadcaster, NRK, claim Nilsen was sacked at the behest of the Russian intelligence service, the FSB.
The Andreev Bay nuclear accident took place at Soviet naval base 569 in February 1982. Andreev Bay is a radioactive waste repository 55 km northwest of Murmansk and 60 km from the Norwegian border, on the western shore of the Zapadnaya Litsa. The repository entered service in 1961. In February 1982, a nuclear accident occurred in which radioactive water was released from a pool in building #5. Cleanup of the accident took place from 1983 to 1989. About 700,000 tonnes of highly radioactive water leaked into the Barents Sea during that time. About 1,000 people took part in the cleanup effort. Vladimir Konstantinovich Bulygin, who was in charge of the naval fleet's radiation accidents, received the Hero of the Soviet Union distinction for his work.
