Russia's Homer Simpson Syndrome?

(AP)  Drinking and drug abuse make the danger of accidents and theft at Russia's nuclear facilities a severe problem, activists and sociologists warned Monday.

Citing what they called a crisis in Russia's nuclear industry, members of Greenpeace and other groups urged the government to improve safety and security at existing sites instead of building more nuclear reactors.

President Vladimir Putin has stressed the importance of the nuclear sector for defense and power needs. Russia said two years ago it wanted to build 20 new reactors by 2020 and double reliance on nuclear power — which now accounts for about 14 percent of Russia's electricity.

At a news conference Monday, experts described a nuclear industry beset by alcoholism and drug addiction — and a leadership that not only fails to address the problem, but aggravates it.

"Every day, every month, every year, we see less and less attention to the human factor," upon which "the safety of our country depends to a decisive degree," said Gennady Denisovsky, of the Institute of Sociology at the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences. That inattention is a risky mistake, Denisovsky said.

"A nuclear power plant does not fight alcoholism, it propagates alcoholism," said Vladimir Lupandin, also with the Institute of Sociology.

"Alcoholics are advantageous for nuclear power plants — they are modest and undemanding, they can work where all norms of sanitary safety are violated, and they can be fired at any time," he said. He said drug abuse is also a problem because of the high stress at nuclear facilities.

The Nuclear Energy Ministry has defended the industry's safety record as very good and ministry spokesman Nikolai Shingaryov said Monday that alcohol and drug abuse are less prevalent in cities housing nuclear facilities than elsewhere. He said abuse among employees in responsible positions is nonexistent.

Nadezhda Kutepova, director of the Planet of Hopes activist group, said alcoholism is common at Mayak, a nuclear processing plant that was a major Soviet-era weapons facility.

In Ozyorsk, the Ural Mountains city where Mayak is located, "people sitting with a can of beer on the bus on the way to work, people working with hangovers — this is the norm."

She said in 1999, Ozyorsk recorded the highest per capita growth in drug addiction in Russia, and that the drinking problem developed in part because of the Soviet-era teaching that alcohol helps counter radioactive substances.

Last year, 45 cases of drunkenness on the job were recorded at Mayak, and 11 people were fired, Kutepova said. But she believes those statistics — at a facility where she said workers could drink alcohol on the job during Soviet times — are the tip of the iceberg.

She said Russia's "closed cities" — communities surrounding plants like Mayak that were part of the Soviet nuclear weapons industry — should be opened to increase accountability.

"In closed cities ... violations are simply covered up because nobody wants them to get out," Kutepova said. "The majority of people in leadership positions protect their employees when they find them under the influence."

She said reports of technical problems or safety violations often do not go beyond the fences of facilities.

Sergei Kharitonov, who worked for 27 years at the Leningrad Atomic Power Station near St. Petersburg, said nuclear power plants have similar problems.

Kharitonov, who works with the Norwegian environmental group Bellona, said the Leningrad plant suffers from "a total lack of a culture of security."