Russia's nuclear past haunts Urals villages

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@EARTHLINK.NET>]

Index:



Russia's nuclear past haunts Urals villages

Australia says cleans up British A-bomb test site

Wild turkey causes scare at N.H. Seabrook nuke

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Russia's nuclear past haunts Urals villages



MUSLYUMOVO, Russia, March 25 (Reuters) - Raya Khamatova's geese and 

cattle are scattered along the banks of the Techa river, one of 

Russia's most lethal nuclear dumping grounds.



In the hot months of the Urals summer her grandchildren pick berries 

and paddle in the crystal clear waters. The plains around them are 

among the most radioactive places on earth.



>From 1949 to 1956 the secret Mayak nuclear complex, 30 km (18 miles) 

from Khamatova's village of Muslyumovo, dumped 76 million cubic 

metres (2.68 billion cubic feet) of highly radioactive waste into the 

river.



In 1957 an explosion at a Mayak reservoir, the worst Soviet nuclear 

disaster until a reactor at the Chernobyl plant blew up in 1986, 

showered radiation over the region on the threshold of Siberia.



The last big accident registered at Mayak was in 1967, when the 

Karachai reservoir, used to store waste, partially evaporated after a 

dry, hot summer. Strong winds dispersed clouds of radioactive dust 

over a vast area.



Today, radiation levels along the river banks are still far above 

natural levels. In parts, levels are more than 1,000 times above 

global safety limits.



And there are no official plans to resettle Khamatova and her fellow 

villagers.



The Soviet authorities took almost half a century to admit to the 

accidents and dumping at the secret complex, though scores of workers 

died of radiation exposure.



Some villagers were exposed to radiation comparable to doses 

sustained by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings 

in World War Two. No one was told of the danger to which they had 

been exposed.



"We noticed the water we drank began to taste strange," said 66-year-

old Khamatova over a cup of milky tea. Tonnes of chemical waste were 

thrown in the river along with nuclear waste.



"But we thought there had been an accident upstream and that a car 

was leaking fuel into the river."



Though forbidden from fishing and swimming in the river by the 1950s, 

most villagers did not learn of the disasters until Soviet leader 

Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost, or openness, in the late 

1980s.



"HOW WILL WE SURVIVE?"



Khamatova, who suffers from severe arthritis and shooting pains from 

the radioactive strontium-90 that has settled in her bones, receives 

a monthly compensation payment of 40 roubles (just over a dollar). 

She lives only metres (yards) from the Techa.



Several villages along the river were resettled in the 1950s, but the 

mainly Tatar village of Muslyumovo was never moved. There are no 

official plans to resettle it.



"They once spoke of building New Muslyumovo. But no one ever saw it," 

said Khamatova, who used to work in the village's general store. "We 

get used to living in a village. If they move us, there will be no 

gardens and how will we survive?"



Many residents turned down an offer to move to a village of several 

five-storey blocks erected in the middle of nowhere further away from 

the Techa because they would lose the state benefits they receive.



"People who get moved die anyway, alone," Khamatova said.



Muslyumovo is well aware of the cost of radiation. The death rate is 

far higher than the birth rate in the village of 3,200. In 1950 to 

1954, after the largest quantities of waste were dumped, more than 

half the children born to village families had developmental 

problems.



The remains of many of those who did not survive are kept in the 

medical institute of the nearby city of Chelyabinsk, in large brown 

jars of formaldehyde.



Officially, Mayak ceased to dump waste in the Techa after villagers 

began to fall ill. But some historians say it stopped after traces of 

the waste were found in the Atlantic Ocean -- literally leaking the 

whereabouts of the Soviet plutonium plant.



HAUNTED BY NUCLEAR FALLOUT



Several km (miles) downstream from Muslyumovo was once the village of 

Kurmanovo. It was fully resettled further inland.



But Novo (New) Kurmanovo, a village of neat wooden houses along a 

dirt track, is still haunted by the Techa fallout.



Rafida Faizullina, who lived in Muslyumovo before Novo Kurmanovo, 

suffers from anaemia and chronic fatigue syndrome.



Her son Ramsis, 18, was born with hydrocephalus -- an abnormal 

increase in the amount of fluid in the skull which leaves people with 

unusually large heads.



"I lived here all my life and received huge doses of radiation. This 

is what I got in return," said Faizullina, gesturing at her son. 

"When I had him, they said it was because I had given birth late, at 

37. But there are others like him."



Ramsis studies psychology in Chelyabinsk, 70 km (45 miles) away. But 

he cannot manage the two hour journey into the city, some 1,400 km 

(870 miles) southeast of Moscow, every day. The fatigue makes his 

head spin.



In 1993 the Russian government officially acknowledged the accidents 

at the plant, which produced plutonium for the Soviet Union's first 

atom bomb in 1949. It then admitted some 450,000 people had been 

affected by radiation.



But activists say little is being done to prevent  similar disasters 

at Mayak. The plant has stocks which could produce a blast several 

times more serious than Chernobyl.



Earlier this year the Russian nuclear safety body shut down Mayak's 

plutonium reprocessing plant. It was again granted a license only 

months later, on condition it limits its waste.



Officials denied there was any risk that Mayak's main dumping ground, 

the Karachai reservoir, could overflow or permeate drinking water. 

The radioactivity levels of the reservoir are 10 times higher than 

those dispersed after the Chernobyl explosion.



"There is no risk at all, not even theoretically," said Evgeny 

Ryzhkov, a spokesman for Mayak. "Our aim is to one day stop dumping 

waste into Karachai and to cover it, maybe plant grass."



The problem, Ryzhkov said, is money. Russia's cash-starved nuclear 

lobby pushed deputies two years ago to allow imports of foreign spent 

nuclear fuel. The vast majority of the waste to be reprocessed will 

be stored at Mayak.



Officials say the project will bring in much-needed cash.



But, in Novo Kurmanovo, Ramsis and his mother are sceptical.



"Money? Maybe," Faizullina said. "But they will get the money. And we 

will suffer the consequences."

--------------------



Australia says cleans up British A-bomb test site



SYDNEY, March 25 (Reuters) - Australia said on Tuesday it had 

achieved a world first in successfully cleaning up a former British 

atomic bomb test site in the desert outback.



But environmental watchdog Greenpeace said it feared the government's 

announcement of a successful clean-up was connected to its expected 

decision on locating a low-level radioactive waste dump in South 

Australia.



Despite years of controversy and even criticism from within the clean-

up programme, Science Minister Peter McGuaran said steps were being 

taken to allow the site's traditional Aboriginal owners, the 

Maralinga-Tjarutja people, to return to their land.



"It is the first time that a clean-up of a former nuclear test site 

has been completed on this scale anywhere in the world," McGuaran 

told parliament.



Between 1953 and 1957, Britain conducted seven atmospheric atomic 

bomb tests over Maralinga, about 800 km (500 miles) northwest of 

Adelaide in South Australia, and two at Emu, in the state's 

northwest.



Official documents show thousands of British and Australian 

servicemen were used as guinea pigs to test protective suits against 

fallout.



>From 1955 to 1963, Britain also carried out hundreds of smaller tests 

-- not all involving nuclear material.



Most of the deadly waste left at Maralinga was related to those 

smaller trials and included plutonium 239, which remains radioactive 

for up to 250,000 years.



The A$108 million ($64 million) rehabilitation involved the burial of 

360,000 cubic metres (12.71 million cubic feet) of contaminated soil 

in 10-15 metre (33 ft-50 ft) deep trenches. It also involved the 

treatment of radioactive debris pits.



The project has been dogged by controversy and claims of inadequate 

standards, including from a senior U.S. scientific adviser and an 

Australian adviser who worked with it.



"The (government) can't do anything but be seen to build confidence 

in the (nuclear safety) regulator and its ability to clean up 

radioactive waste," said Greenpeace nuclear campaigner James 

Courtney.  (US1-A$1.69)

------------------



Wild turkey causes scare at N.H. Seabrook nuke



NEW YORK, March 24 (Reuters) - Officials at the Seabrook nuclear 

station in New Hampshire locked down the plant and called on the FBI 

on Friday after a "potential intruder" appeared on an electronic 

monitoring device on the plant grounds but did not curtail its 

operations.



"Immediately, we locked down the plant and started doing an intensive 

security sweep of the grounds multiple times. We called on the sea 

coast security, the New Hampshire state police and the local Seabrook 

police," said Al Griffith, a spokesman for the plant.



The plant, rated at 1,158 megawatts, continued to operate at full 

power during the incident.



Since the Sept. 11 attacks, nuclear units in the United States have 

been operating at a heightened level of security.



"With the war ongoing and the high threat advisory ... we have been 

operating at a heightened level of security," Griffith said, 

referring to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's "orange" 

threat advisory, representing a "high risk of terrorist attacks."



During subsequent interviews with the FBI, one Seabrook security 

personnel said he saw "a square-looking object cross his screen (used 

to) monitor the protected area boundary."



Another member of the security, however, told the FBI he saw "a large 

bird (probably a wild turkey) with approximately a four-foot wing 

span fly across the road in front of him" while he was patrolling 

outside the protected area in his vehicle.



The incident prompted the plant's operator, FPL Energy, to declare an 

unusual event on Friday, the lowest of four emergency classifications 

established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for nuclear 

power plants.



In a report to the NRC on Saturday, which lifted the unusual event, 

FPL Energy noted the sighting of the turkey "coincided with the 

location and time the security operator saw the image on his screen."



FPL Energy operates the Seabrook station, located about 13 miles 

south of Portsmouth, New Hampshire on the Atlantic Coast, for its 

parent FPL Group Inc. <FPL.N> of Juno Beach, Florida, which owns a 

majority of the station.



"This event shows the overall effectiveness of the security at the 

station. The intrusion detection system works and detects any type of 

movement. Everyone responded quickly. This event turned out to be a 

false alarm, but we're better safe than sorry," Griffith said.



-------------------------------------------------

Sandy Perle

Director, Technical

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service

ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue

Costa Mesa, CA 92626



Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100  Extension 2306

Fax:(714) 668-3149



E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net

E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com



Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/



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