JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: Russia's effort to expand its nuclear energy industry faces a triple threat: a cash crunch, aging reactors and the growing risk of radioactive waste. CNN's Steve Harrigan reports.</s>STEVE HARRIGAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Workers at this Russian nuclear power station in the town of Udomlya wear two Geiger counters: one measures long-term exposure to radiation; the other sounds an alarm when there is immediate, high-level exposure. How often do the alarms go off?</s>ALEXANDER GULAYEV, SECURITY DIRECTOR (through translator): It happens. Mostly because the workers break the rules. You tell someone to go to zone 200, and they stop in somewhere on the way and get exposed.</s>HARRIGAN: At the same time Russia is pressing for cuts in nuclear weapons, it is exploring a range of ways to expand its nuclear power industry, from the construction of floating reactors to importing nuclear waste.</s>ALEXEI YABLOKOV, ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCHER: They want to earn money. It's simple.</s>HARRIGAN: That need is evident at the Kalininsky nuclear plant, 300 kilometers from Moscow. Construction of a third reactor, begun in 1984, is still not finished.</s>ANDREI MOROZOV, ENGINEER (through translator): I took a job here to run the third reactor. Now I'll be lucky if it's finished by the time I retire.</s>HARRIGAN: Of Russia's 112 nuclear reactors, 30 have already reached their planned life span of 30 years. But shutting a reactor down also costs money and jobs. Critics of the industry say other realities of the nuclear age are still unknown.</s>YABLOKOV: We have huge radioactive pollution around each of these stations. But nobody studies it carefully. Nobody studies it.</s>HARRIGAN: It is a risk Russians in the town of Udomlya face every day, at work and at home. Steve Harrigan, CNN, Moscow.
Russian Nuclear Energy Industry Faces Triple Threat