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Re: Russian nuclear dumping
Private:
Franz Schoenhofer
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna, AUSTRIA
Phone: -43 699 11681319
e-mail: franz.schoenhofer@chello.at
Office:
MR Dr. Franz Schoenhofer
Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management
Dep. I/8U, Radiation Protection
Radetzkystr. 2
A-1031 Vienna, AUSTRIA
phone: +43-1-71100-4458
fax: +43-1-7122331
e-mail: franz.schoenhofer@bmu.gv.at
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Thomas J Savin <tjsav@LYCOS.COM>
An: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu <radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu>
Datum: Freitag, 17. August 2001 16:01
Betreff: Russian nuclear dumping
>Here's an article I came across this morning - Enjoy!
>
>Tom Savin
Did I miss some postings? I do not recall anybody commenting on this
article. So let me start.
I am not interested in the political aspects, though I am very well aware,
that it "might" be in conjunction with the plans of the Russian government
to import foreign nuclear waste for reprocessing in this region. Let us talk
about the radiation protection aspects:
The environmental situation of the region is more than well known and
notorious. The Techa river and even more some reservoirs are well known to
be contaminated and it is as well known, that the - in my opinion - worst
accident ever has occurred in 1957, when tank(s) holding long lived nuclear
fission products exploded and contaminated a very large area. It is as well
known, that the river Techa has been severely contaminated and that its
water has served as drinking water to people living on its shore. The
contamination of these people with Sr-90 has been evaluated recently
carefully.
You wrote "Enjoy". I cannot understand, what one could enjoy by reading or
investigating these circumstances. Is it to point to the former USSR? Up to
my knowledge similar situations occurred or occur in the USA.
Franz
>
>Radioactive Russian Waters Worry Chelyabinsk Governor
>
>MOSCOW, Russia, August 16, 2001 (ENS) - The governor of Russia's
Chelyabinsk region, Petr Sumin, has warned that water in his district is
contaminated with radioactivity from the Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant.
>
>The governor's warning, contained in a July 10 letter to Russian Prime
Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, was disclosed Wednesday by a Moscow based
anti-nuclear environmental group.
>
>The international environmental group EcoDefense! obtained a copy of the
letter and made it public out of concern for public health and safety.
>
>"It is no doubt that such letter must be disclosed because it contains
information on serious threat to millions of Russian citizens," said
Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of EcoDefense!
>
>Governor Sumin's letter says, "It becomes more and more dangerous to use
the Techa River cascade, serving the Mayak facility of Minatom [Ministry of
Atomic Energy]. Open water reservoirs contain about 400 million cubic meter
of radioactively contaminated water. The level of these waters is about to
become dangerous."
>
>
>Sofiya Khrolenko, who lived near Mayak during a 1957 nuclear accident,
shows a videographer the contaminated Techa River. (Photo courtesy Log In
Productions)
>The Chelyabinsk governor demanded immediate action to solve the problem of
radioactive pollution in the water.
>Mayak, Russia's only nuclear reprocessing plant, has dumped its radioactive
waste into Russian rivers over the past 40 years, Slivyak says.
>
>Governor Sumin suggests that constructing a new nuclear plant is the key to
the Mayak problem. He writes, "building of the South-Ural nuclear power
plant allows to solve this problem effectively."
>
>Slivyak calls that plan "disastrous" and "absurd." Instead of working to
get rid of 400 million cubic meters of radioactive waste, Slivyak says,
"Chelyabinsk authority proposes a plan that will increase the amount of
nuclear waste in the region as a result of new nuclear plant operation."
>
>An estimated 14,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste, such as spent
nuclear fuel, has accumulated at Russian nuclear plants.
>
>Slivyak says the amount of medium and low-level radioactive waste in Russia
cannot be calculated across the country because the amount is large and not
all of the locations where it is stored are known to the public.
>
>In May, the Russian government changed a law to open the border for foreign
spent nuclear fuel to be stored or reprocessed in Russia.
>
>Established as an atomic weapons complex in the late 1940s, Mayak is now
the only reprocessing facility operating in Russia. It can handle an
estimated 400 tons a year, but Slivyak says that during the 1990s, the plant
was reprocessing no more than 150 tons of spent nuclear fuel annually.
>
>According to a source at the plant, it needs modernization that would cost
about US$600 million.
>
>
>Russian anti-nuclear protesters lie on a street in Chelyabinsk August 3,
2000 (Photos courtesy EcoDefense!)
>The Chelyabinsk district, called an oblast, is situated in the southern
Urals bordering on Kazakhstan in the south and Bashkortostan in the west.
>A large amount of land near the Mayak facility is still contaminated as a
result of a 1957 accident comparable to Chernobyl in its effects. On
September 29, 1957, a Mayak tank containing radioactive waste exploded,
releasing several millions of Ci of radioactivity into the atmosphere.
>
>Thousands of people were resettled, thousands of square kilometers were
polluted. There is special federal program to rehabilitate this territory in
Russian budget, but it is not clear what kind of programs are implemented
within its framework.
>
>"Mayak must be shut down as soon as possible," Slivyak said. "The more it
operates, the more plutonium will be generated out of spent fuel
reprocessing. Russia doesn't need this plutonium, it already has more than
enough, so it's unlikely that this material will ever be properly watched
and protected," the anti-nuclear campaigner says.
>
>
>
>
>
>---
>Tom Savin
>
>
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