Greenpeace EU Unit: Greenpeace demands an end to nuclear power station financing bz Erste Bank. Thirty environmental activists are walling in the bank`s main office in Vienna

Since the early morning hours, activists from the environmental organisation Greenpeace are walling in the main entrance to the headquarters of the ERSTE Bank at the Graben in the centre of Vienna. With that, the Greenpeace activists protest the participation of the Austrian bank in the financing of two new reactors in the Slovak nuclear power station Mochovce.

"The vast majority of Austrians is opposed to nuclear power, but the ERSTE Bank wants to finance with money of its clients an insecure nuclear power station for the gates of Vienna," explains Jurrien Westernof, energy expert at Greenpeace. "So we ask from the ERSTE Bank that it removes itself from the financing as soon as possible," according to Greenpeace's demand.

The ERSTE Bank is part of a consortium that wants to finance the construction of two new reactors in Mochovce. A year ago, the Slovak government and the Italian energy giant ENEL, owners of the Slovak utility SE (Slovenské elektrárne), decided to go ahead with this new construction.

At present, two reactors of the VVER 440/213 type are running at the nuclear power station Mochovce. This is an outdated Soviet reactor design from the early 1970s. Two new reactors of the same type are to be built and against usual safety norms, the two will not get a so called secondary containment. "Already an airplane crash would with almost complete certainty start a nuclear catastrophe, and that only on 150 kilometers from Vienna," warned Greenpeace spokes person Westerhof.

Besides that, the decision to construct the Mochovce nuclear power plant is based on a decision of the that time Czechoslovak government from the year 1986. Also the safety criteria and technical permits are from that period. The present Slovak government and the Italian ENEL stick to those decisions, although there was under the Communist government neither an Environmental Impact Assessment nor public participation in the decision procedure.

Greenpeace criticises the current developments around Mochovce sharply: "Even just the disrespect for international environmental law should be for the ERSTE Bank sufficient basis to get out of this nuclear financing," concludes Westerhof, "because an Austrian bank like the ERSTE Bank should simply not make its profit from the risk technology nuclear power."

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Steffen Nichtenberger, Greenpeace press speaker; tel. on site: +43.664- 6126703

Ir. Jurrien Westerhof, Greenpeace spokes person for energy; tel. on site: +43.664-6126701

Jan Haverkamp
Greenpeace EU policy campaigner dirty energy
expert on energy issues in Central Europe

tel. Brussels: +32 2 27419 21
tel./fax CZ: +420 242 482 286
mobile B: +32 477 790 416
mobile CZ: +420 603 569 243
e-mail: jan.haverkamp@greenpeace.org

GREENPEACE EU Unit
http://www.greenpeace.org
http://eu.greenpeace.org