nuclear-news

Nuclear pollution in Russia

a0818 BC-EU-ThePollute dEast  –11/24/2009

The Hays Daily News By ARTHUR MAX Associated Press Writer

DNIPRODZERZHYNSK, Ukraine (AP) — Twenty years ago, when the Iron Curtain came down, the world gagged in horror as it witnessed firsthand the ravages inflicted on nature by the Soviet industrial machine. “……….Drifting along Ukraine’s Dnieper River, past this one-time powerhouse of Soviet rule, requires slicing through clouds of black and orange exhaust from a metallurgical plant.

Over a hill, passengers may catch a whiff of a burning garbage dump. Nearby fields are fenced off by barbed wire with signs warning of radioactivity. Farther along, the cruise passes the world’s third largest nuclear power station.

Upstream from Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, the Dnieper picks up water from the Pripyat River, whose sediment is still laced with radioactive caesium-137 from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster………………….

the [Danube] river bears irreparable scars from the Soviet era………….

On the outskirts of Dniprodzerzhynsk, eight fields are fenced off with barbed wire, hung with yellow triangles warning of radioactivity. Nuclear waste was dumped here many years ago. Uniformed officers patrol the area, and stopped two Associated Press journalists to ask why they were there………..Not far away, Evgen Kolishevsky of the Voice of Nature, a local environmental group, takes a reporter to the foot a mountainous slag heap, below which runs the Konoplyanka river that feeds into the Dnieper. “This is the waste from chemical enterprises and of processing and enrichment of uranium,” he said.

“Dniprodzerzhynsk is one of the most contaminated cities in Europe,” he said, shaking his head.

 

 

 

The Hays Daily News

November 25, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, environment, Russia | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear wastes, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive, wastes