nuclear-news

Soviet-Era Uranium Waste Sites Now Threaten Central Asia

Soviet-Era Uranium Waste Sites Now Threaten Central Asia
 mskFerghana.Ru  2 August 09 translated by Paul Goble

Storage sites for uranium tailings that were built in Soviet times in Tajikistan are now leaking radiation into the surrounding atmosphere and ground water supplies, undermining the health and well-being of the people of a republic and a broader region that lack the resources to clean up a problem that it did nothing to create.

At three formerly “closed” locations in Tajikistan – Taboshar, Chkalovsk and Adrasman – Soviet state enterprises mined uranium and left enormous piles of radioactive tailings……………

They are located near major bodies of water: the Kayrakkum reservoir and the Syrdarya River which flows through the territory not only of Tajikistan but of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan as well. As a result, what many might dismiss as Tajikistan’s problem is a much larger one.

Scholars have determined that the radiation from these tailings in some places is more than 30 times levels that threaten human health. But the problems these tailings pose is not limited to radiation directly. They also are the source of poisonous chemicals which have leached into the ground and now appear in plants, animals, and drinking water.

The impact of the release of radioactive materials on the health of the population is already clear. Not only are the numbers of people suffering from cancer increasing, but the age of onset of cancers is falling, with many local people showing signs of cancer when they are only 15 or 16 years old, something almost unheard of earlier……………………

the amount of radioactive leavings is enormous, more than 450 million tons.

As a result the prospects are not good. “The elites have left the area forever because they know that the supplies of uranium are practically exhausted and that sooner or later all the factories and combines involved with the production of nuclear fuel will stop.”

In the end, the news service suggests, the local population will stand alone, facing “only the ruins of nuclear processing and mountains of ecological problems.”

Soviet-Era Uranium Waste Sites Now Threaten Central Asia – Ferghana.Ru Information agency, Moscow

August 3, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1