Dear friends,

2012 was yet another remarkable year for growth and change in the Center for Safe Energy’s work to support community-lead organizations in the countries of the Former Soviet Union. Your continuing support gives us the confidence and power to work with our partners from nascency to maturity. While in the field this year, we witnessed the positive impact of more than a decade’s worth of work with our partners.

In Russia, tackling the problem of decommissioning nuclear reactors happens behind closed doors, and our partners, such as Oleg Bodrov, are making sure that there is an international influence in this process. While on his study tour in 2011 of the Vermont Yankee reactor and its exemplary model of citizen participation in decommissioning, Oleg was determined to not let this collaboration end with the one-week tour. Since then, he has used the knowledge and contacts gained there to advocate and organize for decommissioning in Russia and in his lectures around the world.

With your help, we were able to lead a reciprocal expert exchange to Russia and Kazakhstan this year with U.S. expert, Peter Bradford, former member of the U.S federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and current member of the EBRD advisory group for replacing the capacities of Chernobyl nuclear power plants in Ukraine. He came directly from Fukushima and reported on the world-wide state of nuclear energy and its decline in every country except Russia and China.

In Kazakhstan, Professor Bradford together with CSE partner, Kaisha Atakhanova, was part of a video conference "Year after Fukushima: Current Challenges and Future Energy for Kazakhstan” with nuclear experts from Japan, Russia, and Germany. Our Kazakh partners then used the information to inform the press and public in Kazakhstan of the real dangers of nuclear throughout the world. As a result of the roundtable, our Kazakh partners wrote their demand for a moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants in Kazakhstan!

From Temirtau, one of Kazakhstan’s most polluted regions, a young woman from the local government’s environmental department participated in a CSE delegation in Berkeley in 2011. She is the sole environmental inspector of air pollution levels of the local factories in a town of 169,000.  While in the U.S., she was impressed by the city of San Francisco’s Department of Air Quality, which employs over ten times more air pollution inspectors per capita. As a follow up this year, we brought to Temirtau a U.S. expert on air pollution monitoring who helped develop a partnership between the local government and NGOs in Temirtau to combine efforts for ongoing air pollution monitoring.

CSE’s long-term partners such as Kaisha and Oleg have now become internationally recognized as nuclear experts. In Kazakhstan, the women we trained and to whom over fifteen years ago we gave their first funds to register their organizations, are now representing Kazakhstan as experts all over the world. They are being supported by European organizations due to our years of NGO development training. And the young generation of activists are just beginning to blossom and are eager to partner and grow with us. Imagine what another fifteen years of our work will bring!

The new law in Russia requires any NGO that receives funding from abroad to register as "foreign agents”, which is yet another barrier to freedom and growth of civil society. One of our grassroots partners recently shared how this is impacting their work:  "Our organization has offices and training centers in many local schools. Directors and deputy directors of these schools were notified that they might lose their job because of the cooperation with us.” We must support our partners in their continuous struggle to openly and freely use their basic right to organize as a community.

On the U.S. side, a dozen young environmental leaders from Kazakhstan and Ukraine came to Austin, Texas with CSE to study Austin’s successful models for green development. This allowed us to expand CSE’s program expertise to the exchange program at the University of Texas.

We welcome John Perkins, the former Director of Evergreen State College's graduate Environmental Department and present Professor Emeritus to work at the Center for Safe Energy.  His book in process, Energy and Sustainability, draws on his expertise in Chernobyl and sustainable energy.  Together with Dr. Perkins, we plan to bring teachers on study tours to Chernobyl in order to counter the lack of knowledge about the dangers and economic issues of nuclear energy.

We are looking forward to another remarkable year of evolution as CSE’s world-wide community continues to expand and mature in its leadership and impact on the planet. Thank you for continuing the journey with us by supporting our growth. To all of us a happy, healthy and prosperous new year!

With gratitude,

Enid, Melissa and Aline

Our CSE staff