What is the Laka Foundation

The origin of "the archive", like it was named in circles of the then anti-nuclear movement, is at the beginning of 1981 in Ede (in the neighbourhood of Arnhem). In the first years the activities were restricted to internal training for the region.
In the course of the years after the group of co-workers was extending to a national level and the request for information was not any longer a regional case.

In February 1988 the LAKA (LAndelijk Kernenergie Archief - National Nuclear Energy Archive) was founded. The direct motive to found the foundation as a corporate body was the organisation of a European Congress on nuclear energy.
The Congress was specifically addressed to the radical parts of the anti-nuclear movement: the independent, often local, groups which had no connections to the big national environmental and energy organisations. Groups that were not easy to reach and didn't had or scarcely had international contacts and networks. The preparation started in 1987 and the Congress took place from 1 to 5 February 1989. More than 250 participants from 13 different European countries took part in the Congress.

The documentation centre was housed in a cellar in Ede until the beginning of 1990. In 1990 Laka moved to an office building in Amsterdam. One of the reasons was to be more within reach for journalists, students and other potential visitors. Another arguments, which turned out to be right, was to get easier new co-workers.

After the move to Amsterdam LAKA changed its name to Documentation and Research Centre on Nuclear Energy. Since then the former abbreviation LAKA is described as Laka, because the original acronym was not any longer functional. The interest of Laka became considerably larger. The extent of the group that were making use of the services of Laka has grown. There is no other organisation than Laka in the Netherlands and in the rest of Europe that are collecting information in such a systematic way and makes it accessible for use by third parties.

Since 1990 Laka has cooperated with a broad range of institutes, scientists, authors, journalists and colleague-researchers. In this way there was created a sort of network with persons we can consult when we need specific information we don't have available.

In short, Laka is an organisation built up around an extended archive in the field of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons - which means the nuclear filthiness accompanied by the production and use of such weapons, and non-proliferation.
Besides, Laka has developed a lot of expertise on the industrial use of the nuclear waste product depleted uranium (DU).

Though the role of documentation centres has been changed by the rise of the world wide web, the interpretation and analysis of information is still very important and because of the huge available information it has become even more important.

Now the debate on nuclear energy revives, also the role of Laka as deliverer of information and as part of the struggle against nuclear energy is more relevant than ever.

The starting points are still the same: information has to be freely available. Therefore we only ask the copy and forwarding-charges for information requests. For the bigger requests we ask research costs. In order to be able to furnish the information freely we depend on gifts and donations.


Address:

Laka Foundation
Ketelhuisplein 43
NL 1054 RD  AMSTERDAM
The Netherlands

Tel: +31-20-6168294
email: info@laka.org
web: www.laka.org
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