Oleg Bodrov: The Russian Nuclear-Industrial-Complex
Geopolitics & Empire
Geopolitics & Empire
4.2 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 6 June 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Goyu9Ro3dpg
Russian physicist-engineer and nuclear expert Oleg Bodrov discusses the Russian nuclear-industrial-complex and how nuclear energy and nuclear weapons threaten humanity.
Show Notes
http://www.nuclear-free-future.com/en/laureates/laureates/oleg-bodrov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fki5fi8CTYA
Websites
http://www.greenworld.org.ru/?q=ang_news
About Oleg Bodrov
Oleg Viktorovich Bodrov studied engineering and physics at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. Following his studies, he became a researcher testing nuclear submarine reactor units at the Alexandrov Scientific Institute. On the night of June 20, 1979, an explosion occurred inside the institute’s nuclear submarine test tank, killing two workers. While analyzing the accident, Oleg learned of other whitewashed serious mishaps, including the nuclear meltdown of a submarine reactor some five years before – an accident turned state secret. Oleg tells us: “That is when I understood I need to use my knowledge not for military research, but to protect nature from the nuclear industry.”
Together with 1999 Nuclear-Free Future Award laureate Lydia Popova, Oleg is a founding member and, since Lydia’s passing, chairperson of the GREEN WORLD Council. From 1998 to 2003, Bodrov was the moving spirit behind the Clean Baltic Coalition. In 2004, nominated by the environmental community, Oleg was named Russia’s “Green Person of the Year.” Since 2006, Bodrov has published a number of manuscripts and produced four documentary films on the technical and social aspects of decommissioning nuclear power plants, labors that have not only reshaped thinking at RosAtom (the State Corporation for Nuclear Energy in Russia), but sparked interest internationally among government authorities and concerned citizens beset by the same problem: what to do when the reactor’s time has come? Bodrov has traveled with his PowerPoint presentations to Lithuania, Belarus, Germany, England, and the USA. Our laureate describes his role in the push for a nuclear-free world as that of a “philosopher-organizer.”
*Podcast intro music is from the song “The Queens Jig” by “Musicke & Mirth” from their album “Music for Two Lyra Viols”: http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | We are here today with Dr. Oleg Bodrov. |
| 0:03.0 | He is a physicist, environmentalist, the founder of NGO Green World, |
| 0:08.0 | the recipient of numerous honors such as the Nuclear Free Future Award. |
| 0:13.0 | And if you can tell us a little bit more about yourself as well as your mission. |
| 0:19.0 | I am physicist after the Polytechnical University. |
| 0:23.6 | I was researcher in the Institute, Military Institute. |
| 0:28.6 | I tested the nuclear reactors for submarine, Soviet and Russian submarines. |
| 0:34.6 | But after the accident, I understood that it is really dangerous because it was |
| 0:40.3 | explosion and the building where this nuclear equipment destroyed. Some people died. |
| 0:48.3 | And I decided to investigate the impact of the nuclear industry to the nature. I live in the close |
| 0:56.5 | nuclear town near the St. Petersburg, Sasnovey Borr, and it is the biggest nuclear |
| 1:05.3 | complex. There are now nine nuclear reactors and four under construction now. |
| 1:13.6 | When I was researcher in the Radium Institute, it was regional environmental laboratory. |
| 1:20.6 | I was ahead of the group in this lab. We investigated the impact of the nuclear complex to the Baltic Sea. |
| 1:28.3 | And after the Chernobyl accident, I had a business trip to the Chernobyl area. |
| 1:36.3 | I took samples for the investigation in our lab. |
| 1:40.3 | But the problem is it was not possible to publish this information. |
| 1:44.4 | It was state secret. |
| 1:46.2 | And for me, it was a conflict inside of me and my personal problem, because I have a mission |
| 1:53.8 | like ecologists, but it was not possible to inform people about the risks. And at that time, after the Chernobyl accident, I decided to go away from the nuclear industry, |
| 2:06.6 | and I established the non-governmental organization Green World, and started to act like |
| 2:12.6 | expert and like leader of the anti-nuclear movement. And the last 10 years I had a leader of the project decommissioning. |
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