Tajikistan Faces Dealing With 50 Million Tons Of Soviet-Era Nuclear Waste

[hatrack]

"The former Soviet republic of Tajikistan, where Stalin's empire once mined uranium to create its first nuclear bomb, is on the brink of ecological catastrophe with millions of tonnes of nuclear waste polluting its land. Contaminated soil is "open to wind and rain" and nuclear waste "is dispersed over dozens, if not hundreds, of kilometers around," the pan-European OSCE security body's environment advisor in Dushanbe, Saulius Smalys, told AFP.

The first Soviet nuclear bomb was successfully tested on August 29, 1949, on a field in northeastern Kazakhstan, but the uranium used to make it was extracted in northern Tajikistan. "After the Soviet era uranium extraction in northern Tajikistan, some 50 million tonnes of radioactive waste still remain. If earthquakes, landslides or other cataclysms were to intensify, the contamination may spread," Smalys warned. "Extraction was done manually, with sieves. The technology was so primitive that most of uranium bioxides remained in the waste dump," the expert explained.

EDIT

Nowadays the radiation levels in abandoned mines exceed the norm by scores, while hundreds of Tajiks continue to live on polluted territories, with mine entrances still yawning wide open for the wind to carry contamination far away. According to OSCE figures, cancer levels in Tajikistan's north are 250 percent higher than in other regions. "Some mines are in inundated areas, near rivers, and radioactive waste may reach the Syrdaria river with rains," Smalys warned. This would prove a catastrophe to the fertile Fergana valley along the great Syrdaria river, with its 10 million inhabitants.

Thousands of Tajiks live close to dangerous zones, their apartment windows facing the mine-pitted hills. The OSCE plans to aid Tajikistan in working out a technical project to decontaminate the area and is calling on sponsors such as the international atomic energy agency (IAEA) and the NATO military alliance for funds. "First of all the mines must be covered with three meters of gravel and clay," Smalys said. Tajikistan would require "hundreds of millions of dollars" to decontaminate the area of some ten abandoned mines, said Djabor Salomov, vice-director of the Tajik Academy of Sciences' nuclear security agency."

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/2004/041215050309.l524ttiq.html