ABSTRACT
Eastern Europe is completely reliant upon an energy producing sector that is totally hostile to the environment. The economies of the East European countries traditionally expended between 30 percent and 50 percent more energy than their counterparts in Western Europe to produce the same unit of national income. Communist ideologues traditionally glorified coal miners and their industry as constituting one of the pillars of the new socialist society. Oil has been a mixed blessing for the environment in Eastern Europe. East Europeans typically see natural gas as an "environmentally friendly" fuel that will increasingly displace more heavily polluting solid and liquid fuels in primary energy consumption. Nuclear power received its start in Eastern Europe on January 17, 1955 when the Soviet Union announced that it would cooperate with its allies in the "peaceful development of atomic science, technology, and national economy."
