Российская наука и мир (дайджест)

Российские власти пытаются вернуть ученых, уехавших на работу за рубеж, обещая предоставить им все необходимые условия. Однако большинство возвращаться не торопится. Одна из причин - после работы на Западе трудно вновь приспособиться к российским реалиям, в частности, к постоянным столкновениям с российской бюрократией. По данным центра "Открытая экономика", за границей работают от 30 000 до 40 000 ученых из России - примерно столько же, сколько работает в стране. При этом по-прежнему наблюдается и так называемая "внутренняя утечка мозгов" - когда человек не уезжает, а просто уходит из науки, меняя сферу деятельности.

The government would like to entice the thousands of Russian scientists who have left for better-paying jobs abroad to return to Russia for good. But in a pinch, it appears that officials will settle for a few months a year.
The Education and Science Ministry has opened a tender for 100 scientists working abroad to come to Russia, offering them a chance to lead scientific teams and conduct scientific seminars. Those willing to take part are required to stay in Russia for only two months every year.
The tender comes as top officials express concern over the brain drain that depleted much of the country's intellectual resources after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Russian science suffered a precipitous decline in financial support, prompting tens of thousands of scientists to seek opportunities elsewhere and others to leave science for more profitable fields.
In his first address to the nation on Nov. 5, President Dmitry Medvedev called for Russian scientists to come back home, echoing previous calls from his predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
"We need to organize a large-scale and systematic search for talent both in Russia and abroad, to carry out … some headhunting," Medvedev said. "This will increase the number of talented young people in basic and applied sciences."
But while salaries for scientists have increased in recent years, the government still faces an uphill battle. Many scientists based abroad say they would think twice about coming back even if the salaries in Russia were to rise to levels found in other countries.
Monthly salaries from the state for Russian scientists run from $1,000 to $1,500 - a figure that is 10 times higher than six years ago.
Furthermore, scientists have the possibility of receiving Russian or foreign grants to finance research, meaning that at the end of the month they could take home up to $3,000.
"The salary is not a problem anymore like it was years ago," said Alexander Karasik, a professor at the Moscow Engineering Institute and a laser researcher at the General Physics Institute in Moscow.
But according to research carried out by Ivan Sterligov, an expert with the Open Economy Foundation, better wages are not attracting Russian scientists home. Scientists who have worked in the West find it difficult to adapt to Russian reality and face Russian bureaucracy and politics, Sterligov said.
"Some professors, after working in Canada, came back to St. Petersburg and saw how authorities cracked down on the Dissenters' Marches," said Sterligov, referring to public protests led by liberal opposition movements. "Scientists pay attention to these things as well. Science needs freedom. It is something liberal."
Alexander Nevsky, a senior researcher who heads a lab at the Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Düsseldorf, in Germany, left Akademgorodok, a scientific town 40 kilometers from Novosibirsk, for better opportunities in the 1990s. Nevsky said he would come back home only if he could get the same treatment that he currently gets in Germany.
While the economic situation of his colleagues in Akademgorodok has drastically improved in the past few years, Nevsky said there still remain numerous problems in Russia, above all a lack of transparency.
"Sometimes money is spent to buy new equipment, but people don't use it because they didn't need such equipment," Nevsky said. "Equipment is bought through such complicated channels that no one understands where the money came from."
Scientists say the Russian Fund for Fundamental Research gives the grants but that the money is enough only to pay salaries, not to buy equipment.
"The grants we get are enough to buy computers but not modern equipment," Karasik said, adding that scientists often struggle to conduct research on Soviet-era equipment. "We try to compete with foreigners only with our enthusiasm, but there are few teams able to compete internationally."
Valentin Gordeli, a biophysics professor at the Jean-Pierre Ebel Institute of Structural Biology in Grenoble, France, echoed that bureaucracy and constant lack of funds hamper work done in Russia. "An experimenter needs equipment and substances, and he needs them quickly, otherwise it is impossible to compete," Gordeli said. "When compared to working in the West, there are very few Russian scientists who want to come back and work under such circumstances."
Transparency is also an issue, with grants often given to groups who have connections rather than to those that deserve funding, Gordeli said.
"Financing should be a transparent process, and people should get grants in open competitions," he said.
The Soviet scientific establishment was one of the largest in the world, boasting more than 1 million scientists, or roughly one-third more than in the United States at the time. But its superiority was not only in numbers: Soviet scientists were considered among the best in the world.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia inherited immense Soviet scientific resources. During the economic and social turmoil of the 1990s, however, science was downgraded from its status as a state priority. Consequently, the Russian research establishment - like many other sectors of Russian society - was hit hard by the economic crisis that followed the Soviet collapse.
Problems in the field are evident in the number of scientists actually working in Russia. There are an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Russian scientists now working abroad, as compared to 30,000 actively working in the country today, according to research carried out by Sterligov of the Open Economy Foundation.
The field also suffers from "internal brain drain," said Alexander Allakhverdyan, head of the History of Science Organization Center at the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to his research, a total of 160,000 scientific workers left the field for primarily business-related jobs in 1993 alone. The yearly average has since declined, but it is still a common trend, Allakhverdyan said.
Experts and scientists agree that Russia is still struggling to recover from the crisis of the 1990s, as young people prefer to work in more profitable fields. Today, the average age of Russia's scientists is 55, whereas in the West it is 40.
Only 9 percent of young people in Russia consider the profession attractive, while only 3 percent of those who receive an undergraduate degree plan to work in the sciences, according to the Education and Science Ministry.
Seventy percent of students at Novosibirsk State University plan to leave the country soon after they get their degree, according to research conducted by the Novosibirsk branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Young Russian scientists prefer to get their doctorates in Europe or the United States, as it gives them the chance not only to learn a foreign language but also to improve their future employment prospects, Sterligov said.
"Young people don't study science," said Nevsky, the senior researcher at the University of Düsseldorf. "They prefer business and economics. For two years running, there are fewer students than required at Novosibirsk State University because there are no prospects."

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Los Angeles Times - CA, USA / January 18, 2009

Russian champion of Siberia's Lake Baikal has tough fight
Ecologist Marina Rikhvanova is trying to protect Siberia's Lake Baikal. She is up against a Kremlin and business elite intent on exploiting natural resources.

By Megan K. Stack

Эколог Марина Рихванова пытается защитить сибирское озеро Байкал. Она выступает против намерений Кремля и деловой элиты эксплуатировать природные ресурсы
Впервые Рихванова столкнулась с властями в 2005 году, когда трубопровод по транспортировке нефти с сибирских месторождений к Тихому океану должен был пройти в полумиле от Байкала. Ученые, включая Рихванову, предупреждали, что эта территория подвержена землетрясениям и что утечка нефти может обернуться катастрофой для озера.

Reporting from Irkutsk, Russia - There are days when renowned Russian ecological crusader Marina Rikhvanova feels like an endangered species.
She has gotten used to a certain amount of ambient harassment - the intelligence agents rifling through her files, the bank accounts abruptly blocked, the phone she believes is bugged. It comes with the territory.
As Russian President- turned-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has rolled back democracy and downsized civil rights, activists of all stripes have struggled to operate. But with the Kremlin and big business so intertwined that they've become virtually indistinguishable, the Russian elite appears to reserve a special brand of venom for those who tend to clash most directly with business: environmental advocates.
"We are preventing them from doing very quietly what they want to do very quietly," says Rikhvanova, 47, seated in the office of her Baikal Ecological Wave organization in this Siberian city.
Russia's efforts to reclaim lost superpower status are staked on the exploitation of vast natural resources, from oil and natural gas to timber and diamonds. Against this backdrop of runaway capitalism, independent ecologists such as Rikhvanova are voices in the wilderness.
Short, stolid, frowning skeptically through tinted eyeglasses, Rikhvanova seems an unlikely foil to Putin. She came to her love of nature early in life, and still recalls the smell of spring in the Siberian village where her parents taught school. Her father took her to explore forests and to gaze over the vast stretches of Lake Baikal.
The world's deepest and oldest freshwater reserve is treasured by evolutionary biologists as a liquid cornucopia of rare species. The lake holds an estimated 20% of the world's fresh water and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but has repeatedly been put at risk by the march of Russian industry.
"It's huge, tremendous, mysterious, beautiful," Rikhvanova says, watching tiny winter birds peck at the feeder dangling outside her window.
"It's 25 million years old, and every organism, every being, in Lake Baikal is a witness to this history."
Rikhvanova's first major clash with Putin erupted in 2005 when a pipeline to transport oil from the Siberian fields to the Pacific coast was slated to skim within half a mile of Lake Baikal. Scientists, including Rikhvanova, warned that the area is prone to earthquakes, and that an oil spill could prove catastrophic for the lake.
Transneft, the state pipeline company, did not respond to the warnings, and the government's own environmental experts backed the pipeline company. Only after Rikhvanova's organization and other environmental groups drummed up street protests in Siberia and Moscow did the government blink: Putin produced a red pen during a televised meeting, gestured at a map and ordered the pipeline rerouted.
But for Rikhvanova, it was a wan victory.
"It demonstrated the uselessness of the legislation and legal system in Russia, the management of ecological issues, that the whole thing was corrupt," she says. "It should have been based on assessments and expert opinions. Instead, the president took a crayon and drew a line on a map."
Her next battle was already on the horizon. In January 2006, Putin announced Russian plans to create an international uranium enrichment center, a factory that would provide enriched uranium to any country within international law. Putin described the center as a nondiscriminatory way to spread nuclear energy without divulging nuclear secrets.
Soon, state nuclear giant Rosatom had unveiled plans to open the center on the grounds of a former chemical plant in Angarsk, just a few hours from Lake Baikal. The project has steamed ahead, despite vehement protests from Rikhvanova and other local ecologists.
Rosatom spokesman Fyodor Dragunov insists that the plant management has dealt openly with the community, inviting women's groups and youth organizations to take guided tours of the plant; meeting with the public; and releasing safety information.
"Experts and specialists have concluded that the plant does not pose any danger," he says.
"You need to exclude these fanatics who are not satisfied with conclusions and results. It's practically useless to explain anything to them."
Rikhvanova and other environmentalists accuse Rosatom of hiding behind a screen of carefully packaged excursions and scientists who are paid to downplay the plant's risks.
"Rosatom kept deceiving everybody," Rikhvanova says.
"They promised to hold public hearings on the project, but nothing was done. They promised to assess possible consequences of accidents at the plant, but nothing was done."
Alarmed that the uranium enrichment center would soon be operating, Rikhvanova began plans to step up her protests. In the summer of 2007, she helped set up a protest camp of dozens of radical anti-nuclear protesters in Angarsk.
Before dawn one day in July 2007, young men armed with rods and knives attacked the camp and beat the protesters. One of the ecologists died; others were hospitalized. The government described the attackers as ultranationalist skinheads.
They also announced that Rikhvanova's son, Pavel, then 19, was among them.
This is where Rikhvanova's story gets murky, and where the winner of the prestigious 2008 Goldman Prize for grass-roots environmentalism found herself tangled in controversy.
She and her husband, Yevgeny Rikhvanov, forbid Pavel to speak with reporters, because his case still hasn't gone to court. But they say he was lured into the attack by a mysterious young man he'd met at a soccer game.
It had all begun, she says, when a group of thuggish guys came from nowhere and attacked Pavel. Another young man burst from the crowd and helped him to fend off the attack. The two became friendly. Soon thereafter, the new friend told Pavel that he owed him one. He needed to help him in a fight, he said.
And so Pavel went along. It was dark. He didn't understand what was happening, whom he was fighting, until it was too late, his parents say.
This account clashes with other versions Rikhvanova has given to reporters, including early insistence that her son was not involved.
On one point, Rikhvanova has never faltered. "It was a setup," she says. "It was an attempt to discredit me."
Rikhvanova's story strikes many of her defenders as entirely plausible, which is a measure of just how shadowy and byzantine Russia has become.
This is a country where journalists are gunned down; oil executives are thrown into jail; and, this fall, a suburban editor who spoke out against deforestation was beaten into a coma. Against this backdrop, almost anything seems possible.
"I don't know how it was done or whose plan it was, but I'm totally confident it was not an accident that her son was arrested," says Svetlana Zlobina, an Angarsk journalist who specializes in environmental coverage. "There are two things they are doing to us: They want to buy us, or they want to scare us."
The organizers of the attack remain at large, and unidentified, the family says. Pavel was arrested, and spent a year in a crammed jail cell that held 12 people and four cots. They had to sleep, and even sit down, in shifts. He told his parents that they were regularly beaten. He was held for the maximum time allowed, then released pending trial.
Among government and industry supporters, the idea that Rikhvanova was set up is dismissed as a ridiculous conspiracy theory. In these circles, animosity toward Rikhvanova lurks close to the surface. Rosatom spokesman Dragunov describes her as "pretty fanatical."
Then there's Vadim Titov, a young, lanky sociologist who is a member of the Rosatom- organized Public Council on Issues of the Safe Use of Atomic Energy in the Irkutsk Region.
Ecological groups, he argues, are funded by the West, and their protests are designed to undermine the stability of the Russian state. He scoffs at their "slogans and posters in squares," and complains about the "radical political movements, anarchists and anti-fascists" who are sleeping out to protest the nuclear plant.
"They are consciously misleading the public," he says. "Often ecological organizations are just pretexts to get funding for people who are not really concerned with ecology."
He describes the attacks on the antinuclear camps as deeply regrettable, but adds that the protesters "excessively demonstrated and obviously aroused irritation."
And Rikhvanova's contention that the attack was meant to warn activists away from the uranium enrichment center? "This theory," he says crisply, "doesn't have any right to exist!"

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Inventorspot - USA / Fri, Jan 23, 2009

Russian Chemists Develop Composite Material Better than Polyethylene

By M Dee Dubroff

Российские химики разработали композиционный материал на основе синтетического аналога минерала монтмориллонита. Полученный материал напоминает полиэтилен, но более устойчив к высоким температурам.

If you are wondering exactly what is polyethylene, it is a thermoplastic commodity heavily used in consumer products (notably the plastic shopping bag). Over 60 million tons of the material is produced worldwide every year.
According to news sources, this new composite has traces of "montmorillonite," which is named for the Montmorillion settlement in France. These traces have been arduously inserted into polymer matrix as scientists developed a way to synthesize, which keeps the mineral structure intact, while simultaneously introducing it into a polymer with a totally different chemical nature. (A polymer refers to a large class of natural and synthetic materials with a variety of properties and purposes.)
Polyethylene is very sensitive to heating and it burns almost entirely. Its chemical nature has prevented its matrix from binding with mineral particles; that is, up until now. After thoroughly studying the structure of the new material, Russian chemists have developed the technique of using a mineral as a filling agent, which consists of numerous layers, none of which are bonded. They used a non-natural mineral that was only slightly modified (montmorillonite) and were the first to utilize the technique of "very cold (meaning slow) neutron scattering."
Researchers discovered that they could synthesize the material by varying parameters and mineral modifications. Introduction of as little as 1-3 volume percent of montmorillonite significantly reduced (compared to polyethylene) flammability and gas permeability of the new composite, as well as its thermal stability.
Since the catalytic agent is located both inside and outside mineral layers, polyethylene forms in both places. This multilayer "filling" becomes tightly bonded with the polyethylene matrix, resulting in a new composite material with evenly distributed nanolayers of montmorillonite (which, as any clay, doesn't burn and doesn't stretch under heating) in the total volume of polyethylene.
So the next time you bring a plastic bag home from the grocery, take another look. For one thing it may feel different to you and for another, it may be looking back!

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PhysOrg.com / January 21st, 2009

Caspian Tiger Extinct But Lives On In Siberian Tiger

By Mary Anne Simpson

Каспийский тигр, обитавший в Центральной Азии и полностью исчезнувший почти 40 лет назад, принадлежал практически к тому же виду, что и амурский. Генетическая разница между ними настолько невелика, что можно всерьез говорить о возможности восстановления исчезнувшей популяции.

(PhysOrg.com) - The extraordinary Caspian Tiger became extinct over 40-years ago. Through modern genetic analysis it has been discovered the Caspian Tiger and the Siberian or Amur Tiger still in existence are separated by only one letter of genetic code.
The Caspian Tiger can be reestablished by using their relative, the Siberian Tiger. According to John Seidensticker, a tiger conservationist this means the loss of only a part of a subspecies as opposed to the loss of a whole subspecies. In practice, the zoo breeding programs for the Siberian Tiger are largely successful.
The Caspian Tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) genetic roots span over a million years. A nearly cataclysmic event during the late Pleistocene Era, some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago nearly wiped out all tigers. Fortunately, a small remnant of tigers survived. In 2004 scientists revised the known classification to five tiger subspecies from eight previously identified.
The Caspian Tiger and the Amur or Siberian Tiger began in China and spread westward along the Silk Road. Sometime later these magnificent tigers expanded their territory by moving northward and eastward into what is known as the former Soviet Union. Researchers believe that sometime in the early 1900s the Caspian and Siberian tigers intermingled, but were subsequently isolated by hunters.
The two majestic Russian cats, the Siberian and Caspian Tigers preferred slightly different terrain. The Siberian Tiger prowled the rich mix forest in the southern Russian Far East region on the Sea of Japan. While the Caspian Tiger inhabited the inland drainage basins of Western and Eastern Asia among the reeds and waterways hunting their prey hidden by lush vegetation. The Caspian Tiger was an exquisite specimen in appearance and size, weighing in a range of 375-530 pounds with an average body length of nearly 10-feet. During the Winter the Caspian Tiger had a lush, thick reddish coat with black or brown stripes set in a close pattern with a silky haired white belly and a beard. The word that best describes the Caspian Tiger, is formidable.
Unfortunately, the riverside vegetation was cleared for cultivation and in-habitation, thus the Caspian Tiger was deprived of its habitat and its prey in the 1930s. Cotton fields were planted and the rivers were used for irrigation. Soon, the Caspian Tiger became an alien in its own territory and was targeted and hunted down as a menace to human settlements and a threat to livestock. The Caspian Tiger pelt was prized for its beauty and fetched a hefty price. A further environmental insult occurred when the river vegetation and reeds were cleared to eradicate malaria on the Southern shores of the Caspian Sea in the 1950s and 1960s. The last reported Caspian Tiger sighting happened in the 1960s and 1970s.
Russian and international conservation groups banned tiger hunting in 1947, but it was too late for the Caspian Tiger to make a recovery. Poaching and contributing factors wiped out the majestic cat. Conservation efforts did help to protect and stabilize the Siberian Tiger. Fortunately, the subspecies commingling in the distant past will allow the Caspian Tiger to once again take its rightful place in the family tree of tigers.

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Intelink - La Ciotat, France / 18/01/2009

La science et les technologies russes au jour le jour

Evelyne Casalegno

Le programme Mir de recherche dans le Baïkal encore plus important en 2009

В 2009 году планируется продолжить исследования озера Байкал с помощью батискафов "Мир".

Le second volet, prévu pour cette année, du programme scientifique visant à explorer le lac Baïkal au moyen des sous-marins de poche Mir sera encore plus important que le premier, réalisé en 2008 (*). Les chercheurs se disent très intéressés par les hydrocarbures (pétrole et hydrates de gaz) provenant des profondeurs du plan d'eau, rapporte RIA Novosti.
Le programme scientifique de la seconde campagne d'exploration du Baïkal au moyen des engins de plongée Mir sera, cette année, encore plus riche que celui de 2008, a déclaré à la mi-décembre Mikhaïl Slipentchouk, responsable du groupe de sociétés Metropol, qui finance ce projet, et président du Conseil de tutelle du Fonds d'aide à la préservation du Baïkal. L'académicien Mikhaïl Gratchev, de l'Institut de limnologie de l'Académie des sciences russe, est revenu, à l'issue d'une réunion du Conseil scientifique de ce Fonds, sur quelques-uns des principaux résultats de l'expédition 2008.
Mikhaïl Gratchev a rappelé que lors du premier volet de cette exploration sous-marine, de juillet à septembre dernier, ses collègues et lui-même s'étaient intéressés principalement aux "phénomènes pétroliers naturels" qui se déroulent dans le lac. En certains points du plan d'eau, en effet, des hydrocarbures remontent à la surface.
Selon les scientifiques, il s'agit d'un pétrole qui se forme à partir de déchets organiques se trouvant au fond du lac.
"Il nous semble, a précisé Mikhaïl Gratchev, que ce pétrole se forme actuellement, sous nos yeux, à partir de déchets se trouvant à quelque 2 ou 3 kilomètres de profondeur. Cela présente un grand intérêt dans le cadre du problème global du mécanisme de la formation du pétrole".
Lors de la campagne d'étude du Baïkal en 2008, les scientifiques sont parvenus à localiser les points où le pétrole remonte à la surface, notamment dans la région du cap Gorevoy Utes. Il se forme au total, selon eux, environ 4 tonnes de pétrole par an. Le fond du lac est parsemé de failles et fractures par lesquelles passe le pétrole. Ce pétrole est ensuite absorbé par des microorganismes vivant dans le Baïkal, ce qui fait qu'il ne se diffuse pas dans le reste du plan d'eau et demeure localisé.
Les chercheurs demeurent divisés quant à l'origine du pétrole. Un premier groupe penche pour l'hypothèse selon laquelle le pétrole aurait une origine organique (il se formerait à partir de déchets d'animaux et de végétaux), tandis qu'un second penche pour une origine minérale - le pétrole proviendrait d'une synthèse s'opérant dans la nature à partir de combinaisons inorganiques.
Mikhaïl Gratchev a ajouté que son équipe s'était également intéressée au problème de la formation des hydrates de gaz, qui sont des combinaisons de méthane et d'eau se formant sous une pression élevée, dans les profondeurs du lac.
Les profondeurs du Baïkal ont étonné les scientifiques par la richesse du monde animal : divers microorganismes, un puissant plancton, des vers plats, des amphipodes, des poissons et autres habitants des eaux profondes forment un milieu biologique et écologique exceptionnel. Ainsi, à une profondeur de 130-140 m, les plongeurs ont découvert une nouvelle variété d'éponge - une éponge bleu ciel (ces animaux sont habituellement verts ou blancs). Les chercheurs sont incapables d'expliquer le pourquoi de cette couleur. La vie s'est avérée particulièrement intense à proximité des lieux d'où sortent le pétrole et le gaz. Ces endroits feront l'objet d'une étude approfondie.
Evoquant le lien entre le financement de cette expédition et son contenu scientifique, Mikhaïl Slipentchouk a noté que la majeure partie des moyens financiers avait été dépensée en 2008. Mais cela ne conduira pas à une réduction du programme scientifique en 2009, a-t-il affirmé. "Nous avons planifié au total 7,5 millions de dollars pour un programme de deux ans, a-t-il dit. Le programme est déjà financé à 80%, l'argent ayant été dépensé pour préparer l'infrastructure, la base matérielle, les barges, les grues, les cabines, le contrat avec la compagnie de navigation, l'achat du mazout, les dépenses pour le personnel. Il nous reste à financer en 2009 les salaires et le rapatriement des Mir. Moins d'argent sera dépensé, mais le programme scientifique sera plus important."
La compagnie Metropol est pour l'instant la seule à assurer la charge financière de cette expédition. D'aucuns aimeraient bien que soient impliqués dans cette aventure d'autres fonds privés (des négociations sont en cours avec le Fonds du Prince Albert II de Monaco, lequel souhaiterait effectuer une plongée à bord d'un Mir), ainsi que des fonds publics (le ministère des Ressources naturelles et la Commission de la Douma chargée de l'utilisation de la nature ont promis leur aide, mais sans la concrétiser pour l'instant).
(*) L'an dernier, les sous-marins de poche Mir-1 et Mir-2 ont effectué 52 plongées, atteignant une profondeur maximale de 1.608 m. Le programme d'exploration Mir prévoit au total 160 plongées sur deux ans. L'origine du Baïkal, apparu il y a quelque 25 millions d'années, demeure une énigme. Long de 636 km, il recèle environ 23 000 kilomètres cubes d'eau douce, soit 20% des réserves d'eau douce de notre planète et 90% de celles de la Russie.

Le nucléaire pour extraire des hydrocarbures ?

Россия планирует широкомасштабное освоение нефтяных и газовых месторождений на Арктическом шельфе, в связи с чем был представлен проект подводного бурового комплекса, энергия для которого будет вырабатываться на атомных энергетических установках. Однако экологи считают, что само освоение шельфа уже представляет экологический риск, который значительно возрастет в случае использования атомной энергетики. Если возникнет аварийная ситуация, ликвидировать последствия будет практически невозможно.

Les responsables russes du nucléaire souhaitent promouvoir leurs technologies dans l'Arctique et développer des installations de forage sous-marines nucléaires. Un projet contesté par les écologistes, relève le site bellona.ru.
Un rapport de Bellona présenté en décembre à Mourmansk attire l'attention sur les risques que pourrait faire courir l'utilisation du nucléaire dans les mers arctiques afin d'alimenter en énergie les installations nécessaires à la production d'hydrocarbures.
Au début des années 90 du siècle dernier, lorsque les nécessités politiques ont imposé la destruction rapide de la flotte nucléaire russe de sous-marins, la question s'était posée d'utiliser les sous-marins militaires de troisième génération retirés du service pour transporter du fret sous la glace de la Voie arctique, et ravitailler ainsi des villes industrielles situées au-delà du Cercle polaire, rappelle le rapport de Bellona.
Ces premières tentatives de "reconversion" du matériel militaire sous-marin au profit d'une activité civile s'étaient toutefois soldées par un échec, car il avait été alors impossible (compte tenu du secret entourant ces matériels) de procéder à une évaluation du risque, évaluation nécessaire pour toute entreprise commerciale.
A la fin du XXe siècle, des gisements de pétrole et de gaz ont été découverts dans le secteur russe de l'Arctique (sur le plateau continental des mers de Kara et de Barents). Le prix du pétrole était alors très peu élevé, ce qui n'avait pas permis de planifier leur mise en valeur. L'exploitation d'un gisement dans l'Arctique requiert en effet quatre à cinq fois plus d'investissements qu'un gisement situé dans des régions plus méridionales.
Par ailleurs, les conditions climatiques et météorologiques de l'Arctique rendent pratiquement impossible l'extraction d'hydrocarbures à partir des traditionnelles plateformes de forage flottantes. Ainsi, le forage et la production de gaz naturel dans les mers de Barents et de Kara ne peuvent être assurés qu'à partir de plateformes sous-marines. C'est dans ce contexte que ces derniers temps on ne cesse de parler d'un recours au nucléaire comme source d'énergie et de la construction de centrales nucléaires flottantes.
Le président de Bellona Mourmansk, Andreï Zolotkov, estime pour sa part que si l'Etat décide de construire des sites incluant des installations énergétiques nucléaires, il doit évaluer objectivement aussi bien la composante économique de ces projets que leurs conséquences écologiques. "Et ces projets, souligne-t-il, doivent être bien compris de la population des régions où de telles constructions sont prévues. Une décision concernant les problèmes du secteur nucléaire ne doit pas avoir de répercussions pour les générations futures."
Selon les données dont nous disposons, poursuit le rapport de Bellona, le coût du MW de puissance installée pour une centrale nucléaire flottante est de 132 millions de roubles. Il serait de 250 millions pour une centrale sous-marine. Or, note le rapport, la pratique d'organisation de tels projets au cours de ces dernières années montre que le volume des investissements nécessaires est multiplié au final par 2,5 ou 3.
Les risques que présentent des installations de forage sous-marines incluant des installations énergétiques nucléaires sont importants, estime le rapport. Ces risques peuvent être liés aux particularités de l'exploitation d'un tel complexe, au comportement de l'équipage, aux conditions climatiques et météorologiques de l'Arctique, aux déchets radioactifs et au combustible usé précédemment noyés dans la région, ainsi qu'à la tentation que pourraient avoir des terroristes de s'en prendre à de telles installations.
L'organisation Bellona considère que l'exploitation du plateau continental de l'Arctique est liée en elle-même à de multiples risques écologiques, sans compter qu'aucun pays au monde ne possède d'expérience de travail dans de telles conditions. Ces risques se trouveraient sensiblement accrus si l'on devait recourir à l'énergie nucléaire. En cas d'accident, il serait ainsi extrêmement difficile (voire impossible) d'en éliminer les conséquences. Dans ce contexte, estime Bellona, la composante économique de tels projets semble bien peu convaincante.