On May 10-12, 2011 a delegation of Finnish journalists and specialists of the Centre for Radiation and Nuclear Safety of STUK (the supervisory body of Finland), within the framework of educational courses for Finnish mass media, initiated by STUK, and the series of public supervisions at Russian NPPs, visited Leningrad NPP and Leningrad NPP-2.

In Sosnovy Bor city, Finnish journalists met with the heads of the city administration and tool part in a two-hour informal conversation with the local deputies and representatives of the nuclear city ecologic community.

On May 11, Leningrad atomists headed by LNPP Director Vladimir Pereguda hosted the Finnish journalists. In the course of the meeting he noted: “The meeting with the Finnish journalists is very essential: we are ready to assist both in the education of our and Finnish journalists, for our neighbours to receive up-to-date and veracious information about nuclear power industry”.

The Director made a detailed presentation about Leningrad nuclear plant and together with Chief Engineer Konstantin Kudryavtsev and the heads of the plant subdivisions answered the guests’ multiple questions about LNPP power units’ safety, radiation safety, stages of the nuclear plant modernization and many others.

As Head of STUK Department on Eastern Europe Heikki Reponen reported, an intergovernmental agreement on the cooperation between Finland and Russia had been signed in 1991. “Since that time we have realized many joint projects with LNPP”, H. Reponen noted, “among others, in the field of radiation safety. This visit to LNPP is a special one; it is connected with the cooperated education of mass media representatives, who, like all the World Community, is in dismay after the events in Japan and needs to receive veracious information about the state of safety systems at NPPs and the adjacent countries. The communication with LNPP experts will in many ways contribute to reduction of the public debates about the prospects of world nuclear industry in Finland”.

In the course of the visit, the Finnish guests attended the new LNPP complex for spent nuclear fuel storage, nuclear plant operating power unit as well as the site of LNPP-2 being constructed. The STUK Information Service Head Risto Isaksson announced that the visit to Leningrad nuclear plant was a part of recurrent courses, where STUK specialists told representatives of mass media, television and radio companies about nuclear technologies and radiation safety. “At first we had theoretical classes with a group of journalists in the office of STUK, then visited the Finnish NPP Loviisa and after that came to Leningrad NPP”, R. Isaksson explained.

Summarizing the results of the visit, H. Reponen noted that “such educational courses had a positive experience – six years ago they had been conducted for the first time – and again the conversation with atomists was open, and the Finnish journalists received irrefragable answers to their questions”. The representative of STUK especially noted the opportunity of visiting to a new complex of LNPP spent nuclear fuel storage as well as the impressing rates of construction of a new power plant of the region.