The Atomic Show #123 – European View of Russian Gas Cutoff

On January 20, 2009 Rod Adams spoke with Alexandra Prokopenko to get a local view of the effects on Eastern Europe of the Ukraine/Russia natural gas supply dispute. Alexandra is a citizen of Belarus who currently lives and works in Sweden. Her husband is living in Kiev, Ukraine and she speaks to him each day. Alexandra is a journalism instructor, writes an energy focused blog and learned to speak Swedish during her multi-year evacuation from the Chernobyl area as a 4 year old.

In other words, she has a very interesting perspective that I find fascinating.

During this discussion, we talked about Russian gas price ambitions, explanations for the EU’s policy on nuclear power plants owned by former members of the “Eastern Bloc”, energy supply security, the thirst for independence and even a bit about the European reaction to the inauguration of a new US president – since our discussion took place just hours after President Obama took office.

I will apologize in advance if some of the conversation sounds a bit disjointed. I once again forgot my nuke training and neglected to use a checklist when setting up to record our discussion. I forgot to tell WireTap to record both the system audio and the incoming mike, so I had a great recording of what Alexandra said to me, but dead silence on what I said to her to cause her responses.

Oh well – sometimes it is hard to get good help.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:51 — 22.4MB)

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