Re: Floods and Contamination

[Laszlo Toro <tlaszlo@mail.dnttm.ro>]

Dear radsafers,
It seems the first part of the information

 "  Floods and Contamination
     Several tons of waste sludge contaminated
with uranium poured
from a
mining operation in western Romania into nearby
streams and then
the Fekete
Koeroes River in eastern Hungary. The pollution
followed
significant spills  ...."

is not true.
The fact than on the uppert part of the Fekete
Koros (Crisul Negru in romanian,
fekete=negru=black), was the biggest romanian
uranium exploatation , a very rich ore at the
begining in open pit and after in an underground
mine, but in this moment the mine is closed and
the remediation works will begin (I hope) in the
near future. Only in some galleries there are
mining activity, they search rare metals. The
uranium mill is at about 350-400km distance.
On the site, as I know, there is only one
retention pond from a molibden mill, if is it is
"younger" than one and a half year. This pond do
not present any radiological hazard. It is not
strictly in the jurisdiction of my lab, but two
years ago I have taken some samples (solid
material and water) from the pond and we did not
found anything else than NORM or lat say a little
bit TENORM.
I did not speak with my collegues who works on
this site (perhaps next week), but we have no
information if there is happened something wrong.
Anecdotically, if you still have patience to read
this message, the open pit mine, in the fifties
was explited by a joint soviet-romanian company
(Sovrom Quartit), all the ore have gone in the SU
and after 1963 the mine mainly processed the
"waste rock" which remained from the russians
(with uranium content at about 8-10%).
The rest of the information is correct:the cianide
and heavy metals contamination in the northern
part of Hungary and Romania and  the flodding of
the Maros and Tisza River ther greatest in the
latest 20-30 years.

Yours,

Laszlo Toro

Radiation Hygiene Dept.
Institute of Public Health Timisoara
RO 1900 Timisoara
16-18 V. Babes av.
Romania
ph. +40 56 192106
fax +40 56 192101
e-mail tlaszlo@mail.dnttm.ro




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