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10 July 2009 Chernobyl-blighted land to be used for biofuel crops The government of Belarus has teamed up with Irish specialists Greenfield to build one of Europe's biggest bioethanol plants. The crops needed to produce the fuel will be grown on land affected by the meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor over two decades ago. Food crops cannot be safely grown on the land, but it is still relatively fertile, making it an obvious candidate for biofuel production. As well as providing feedstock for the bioethanol plant, growing crops on the land will also help with the clean-up as they absorb toxins from the soil. Belarus Foreign Minister Sergei Martynov said: "Belarus depends on imports of energy resources, which is why we invest considerable effort in building up technologies which can work on local and renewable energy sources. "We consider ethanol to be one of the most promising and sustainable sources of cheap and nature-friendly energy, and we have several advantages for its production here. "Firstly, Belarus' agriculture can easily supply the necessary volume of biomass for ethanol production. "Then, Belarus is probably the only country in Europe with vast territories which can be used for biomass production, the lands affected by the Chernobyl catastrophe 21 years ago. "We can link the economic rehabilitation of these lands to agricultural production of biomass for the energy sector." The Minister concluded: "The Government of Belarus has declared ethanol a priority topic for energy development, so we are very happy today to see the first steps being taken, in what we are sure will be a successful and large-scale development of ethanol production." Greenfield chairwoman Ann McClain said the company also plans a programme, connected to the cultivation of biomass crops to supply the ethanol plant, to remediate and decontaminate lands affected by radioactive particles from the Chernobyl nuclear explosion and return them to full use. This project will also take in the two other countries contaminated by the accident, Russia and Ukraine. She said the company planned to conduct field trials once the first ethanol plant is online to establish how the environmental benefits of its approach can be maximised. Ms McClain said: "Greenfield's plan to produce bio-ethanol will use land which has been contaminated by radioactive isotopes to cultivate biomass crops for the ethanol distilleries. "At the same time, we believe that growing the biomass crops will work to clean up the affected areas. "At a later stage, when we move on to second-generation cellulose ethanol, there will be even greater advantages which will mean faster bio-cleaning of the contaminated zones. "We hope we can build on research, field trials, and the experience we accumulate to go on to a comprehensive programme to use biological methods to clean up the areas affected by Chernobyl. "The benefits will be economic, of course, but above all they will be social and environmental." David Gibbs Source: edie newsroom
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By MrGreen It's been updated substantially. The well-known British science magazine, New Scientist, carries this report by Fred Pearce: Biofuels could clean up Chernobyl 'badlands' 27 June 2009 CONTAMINATED lands, blighted by fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, could be cleaned up in a clever way: by growing biofuels. Belarus, the country affected by much of the fallout, is planning to use the crops to suck up the radioactive strontium and caesium and make the soil fit to grow food again within decades rather than hundreds of years. A 40,000 square kilometre area of south-east Belarus is so stuffed with radioactive isotopes that rained down from the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1986 that it won't be fit for growing food for hundreds of years, as the isotopes won't have decayed sufficiently. But this week a team of Irish biofuels technologists is in the capital, Minsk, hoping to do a deal with state agencies to...[comment was too long] © Faversham House Group Ltd 2009. edie news articles may be copied or forwarded
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