Nuclear dump. Nuclear test sites of the world
Savannah River Site (SRS) Nuclear Manufacturing Complex South Carolina provided more than a third of the US weapons-grade plutonium, almost all of the tritium and other nuclear materials (plutonium-238, plutonium-242 and neptunium-237) for military and civilian purposes. Nuclear waste dumps and poor management in the past, failure to carry out necessary cleanup measures have led to widespread contamination of the SRS site, and have also called into question the safety of key water resources in the area, including the Savannah River. Current nuclear waste disposal practices threaten to turn the SRS complex into a high-level nuclear waste dump on the shore of one of the largest rivers southeastern United States.
The SRS complex was built in the early 1950s - five nuclear reactors and two large reprocessing plants for reprocessing nuclear materials(the so-called F and H canyons). They became the sources of the bulk of the pollution.
SRS waste is the most radioactive among all US military nuclear facilities. About 99% of this radioactivity is located in 49 underground tanks designed to store high-level waste: fission products, plutonium, uranium and other radionuclides.
The main danger to water resources is represented by long-lived radionuclides, radioactive substances in buried waste and settling basins, as well as radioactivity in the aeration zone and groundwater under SRS. The danger is further aggravated by the presence of non-radioactive toxins. Disposal methods at SRS included numerous surface burials, trench burials, pit burning, and backfilling. One of the largest and most contaminated areas is the radioactive waste disposal complex located between areas F and H of the reprocessing enterprises. It was mainly used for the disposal of low-level radioactive and mixed waste.
The SRS complex also contains more than ten settling tanks containing billions of gallons of liquid waste contaminated with radionuclides and toxic organic matter. chemicals and heavy metals. The bulk of the liquid waste came from two reprocessing plants and reactors. The practice of dumping solid and liquid waste in past years has led to serious contamination of soil and groundwater. They end up in local streams, from where they then enter the river. Savannah. The effects of pollution from tritium, volatile organic compounds, strontium-90, mercury, cadmium and lead will last for decades. The effects of contamination from iodine-129, technetium-99, neptunium-237, uranium isotopes and plutonium-239 will take thousands of years to manifest, and there is no hope that they will be controlled.
Tritium
Tritium is the most common radioactive substance at the SRS production complex.
Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen. Most tritium is of artificial origin. Tritium is sometimes found in nature, where it is formed by the interaction between the atmosphere and cosmic radiation. Having relatively short period half-life (12.3 years), tritium decays at approximately 5.5% per year.
In nuclear weapons, the main function of tritium is to enhance the production of fissile materials, which is used both in weapons based on pure fission reactions and in preliminary versions of thermo nuclear weapons. Tritium is located in the warhead, in removable, reusable containers and increases the efficiency of the explosion of nuclear materials.
In gaseous form, tritium is usually not particularly harmful to health, since a person exhales it into the air before the body has time to receive a significant dose of radiation. However, tritium can replace one or both hydrogen atoms in a water molecule, thus forming radioactive water, which has the same Chemical properties, as usual. Since water is an essential part of life, tritium water can carry radioactivity to all parts of the body, such as cells, and also penetrate DNA and proteins. Tritium, which is part of organic matter, is called organically bound tritium (OBT). OCT and radioactive water can cross the placenta and irradiate the developing fetus, increasing the risk of birth defects, miscarriages and other illnesses.
Tritium emissions enter streams in the SRS area in two ways: through direct releases and through migration of tritium from landfilled waste into groundwater. During the first two decades or so (from the 1950s to the mid-1970s), the main sources of tritium pollution were reactors and reprocessing plants. Over the next thirty years, tritium migration into and out of groundwater and surface streams increased substantially.
Although the near-surface groundwater under the SRS is not used for drinking purposes, its tritium content is alarming as it migrates into the Savannah River, which is used for drinking water. Tritium measurements in more than half of the monitoring wells located at separation and management sites indicate that tritium concentrations exceed drinking water standards.
The tritium concentration at the mouth of the Savannah, Georgia, river in 2000 was 950 picocuries/liter; in 2002 it was slightly lower - 774 picocuries/liter. This means that tritium is contained in the river along its entire length: from the source of pollution - the SRS complex - and to the Atlantic Ocean. Although tritium has a shorter half-life than other dangerous radioactive isotopes, its half-life of 12.3 years is long enough for tritium to become a major source radioactive contamination rivers for decades. In 1991, tritium was discovered in drinking water wells in Burke County, Georgia.
The U.S. Department of Energy, which administers the CRS, states that the level of tritium contamination is not currently a concern because it is 10 to 20 times less than the maximum permissible level for drinking water contaminants under existing EPA regulations. environment USA. But this fact does not mean that all the rules and requirements for protecting public health have been met.
For example, when analyzing, it is important to make comparisons not only with drinking water standards, but also with background levels of pollution. Natural concentrations of tritium in lakes, rivers and drinking water before testing nuclear tests was 5-25 picocuries/liter. Nuclear tests led to significant growth tritium content in the atmosphere. Although most of it has already decayed, the tritium remaining after nuclear tests is enough to pollute the environment on a global scale.
Current drinking water standards for tritium do not protect children and fetuses to the same extent as adults. Current standards radiation protection suggest that beta irradiation (such as that emitted by tritium) causes the same harm to the body as irradiation of the entire body with gamma or x-rays. But the risk of developing cancer per unit of radiation energy when exposed to tritium can be much higher.
Other contaminants
Not only tritium, but also other radioactive isotopes migrate from waste disposal sites and settling basins into groundwater. The concentration of some radionuclides in groundwater in many areas of the complex exceeds drinking water standards. The most common are strontium-90 and iodine-129, with half-lives of 28.1 and 16 million years, respectively. The content of radium-226, uranium isotopes, iodine-129 and strontium-90 in groundwater also significantly exceeds drinking water standards.
Volatile organic compounds, especially trichlorethylene (TCE) and tetrachlorethylene, have been widely used in SRS as degreasers. TCE is one of the main substances contaminating groundwater throughout the complex.
Fish infection
Fish bioaccumulate certain elements, especially cesium-137 and mercury. By the mid-1950s, it became apparent that SRS activities were affecting fish in the Savannah River.
The fish here contain 3,000 times more cesium than the water itself. According to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, mercury regulations also include protection against cesium-137. A 1996 survey conducted by Morris, Samuel and Benedict College students found that people were fishing near SRS outlets where the water was contaminated. According to the survey, people eat more than 50 kilograms of fish from this river per year. Thus, the reduction in the level of pollution of the Savannah River caused by the activities of the SRS represents most important aspect environmental justice, and the health of all those who depend on this river for their food and for whom it is an important source of protein.
So-called "environmental restoration"
More than 99% of the radioactivity in SRS waste is contained in high-level waste. Just one percent of this amount (about 4.2 million curies) was removed from the containers, mixed with molten glass and cast into glass blocks at a military waste recycling facility. Currently, 1,221 cast glass blocks are stored in alloy steel containers on site in a temporary high-level radioactive waste storage facility. In the long term, they need to be buried in deep geological repositories.
The Department of Energy has not yet decided how to bury all this mass of waste. The original plan involved processing the waste, removing the main radionuclides and vitrifying the radioactive substances. It was proposed to mix the remaining liquid waste with cement and dispose of it on the territory of the complex, turning it into the so-called “salt stone”.
But this plan encountered serious technical difficulties. The originally chosen method was abandoned in 1998. The main problem was that the residual waste produced benzene, a flammable toxic gas whose presence in the tanks created a risk of fires in the radioactive waste.
In 2002, the Department of Energy decided to apply to 49 sites the same procedure that had already been used to “close” the other two - filling them with cement mortar after the bulk of the waste had been removed.
In fact, this “closure” (tank 19) is an example of an incompetent, illegal and dangerous “remediate by dilution” approach. The concentration of radioactivity in the residual waste from this receptacle is estimated to be more than 14 times higher than acceptable standards for Class C low-level radioactive waste, which includes the majority of radioactive waste for which near-surface disposal is permitted. Class C standards are violated for each of the four radionuclides separately: plutonium-238, plutonium-239, plutonium-240 and americium-241. Thus, the residual radioactive substances in this container belong to the class of waste “above class C” or, in other words, transuranium waste of the type that usually requires disposal in deep geological repositories. But if the residual waste from this tank were diluted with a huge amount of cement slurry, then, according to estimates given in the documentation for the closure of tank 19, the radioactivity of such waste would be 0.997 of limit value class C, that is, it will squeeze into the “Procrustean bed” of current standards for “low-level” waste.
The remaining containers to be emptied still contain large quantity radioactivity compared to those that have already been emptied. With estimates of residual radioactivity increasing, the cementation of residual waste in more than 50 high-level waste tanks could result in hundreds of thousands or even millions of curies of radioactivity remaining in them. This is a huge number. In the long term this will represent serious danger for ground and surface water, including the Savannah River.
Plutonium is also a concern. The "emptied" tank 19 is estimated to contain 30 curies of plutonium-239 and nearly 11 curies of plutonium-240. Total The plutonium in this container alone is almost half a kilogram. Residual radioactivity of even 1-2% of this amount gives a huge level of alpha radiation from plutonium, not counting other radionuclides. This situation is dangerous and poses serious risks for future generations.
High level waste
The Ministry of Energy even considered the possibility of leaving the most high-level waste (HLW) at the SRS production complex:
“HLW reprocessing is currently the only costly element of the Environmental Management Program. Its goal is to find a way to eliminate vitrification by at least for 75% of the planned waste and develop at least two reliable cost-effective strategies for all types of high-level waste of the complex.”
Trying to circumvent the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, which requires deep geological burial highly radioactive waste, the Department of Energy has attempted to call this waste not “highly radioactive” but “by-product”. This ploy was stopped by the Federal Court in 2003.
Even if such a practice is recognized by the courts as legal or legalized by new legislation, it will not become safe. Disposing of such quantities of long-lived radionuclides near water is dangerous and will pose a serious and largely unpredictable threat in the future.
Landfilled waste
The disposal of transuranic waste on the territory of the SRS was carried out in the 1970s, and the near-surface disposal of low-level radioactive waste continues to this day. For this purpose huge territory 78 hectares, the so-called Waste Disposal Complex, where mixed radioactive and hazardous non-contaminants are dumped radioactive waste.
The purpose of surface fills is to reduce water infiltration and therefore the penetration of contaminants from the disposal site into groundwater. This method cannot restore already contaminated groundwater. Vegetation that is planned to be planted on top of burial sites increases evapotranspiration and therefore can reduce water infiltration. But vegetation also reduces surface water flow and can therefore increase infiltration in some cases. In any case, backfilling is a short-term half-measure, not a long-term solution. effective solution Problems.
We do not yet understand very well how the interaction of physical, chemical and biological processes leads in the long term to the spread of radionuclides in the environment. For example, when clay is used as a radionuclide barrier, the ion exchange is expected to bind metal cations contained in the waste into the soil. However, in real life in many cases the application of this approach turns out to be very questionable. Regarding biological processes and the spread of radioactivity, there is research into eliminating radioactive contamination using bacteria that concentrate radioactive substances. But if bacteria under certain conditions can be used to eliminate radioactive contamination, then natural conditions, when there is no way to prevent the movement of microorganisms themselves in the environment, they can also cause the spread of radioactive substances.
The Department of Energy's current practice of disposing of low-level radioactive waste in shallow, unlined, and uncontrolled trenches could result in two important issues associated with groundwater contamination. Firstly, such burial of low-level radioactive waste increases the total content of waste in the soil, which can subsequently migrate into the ground or surface water. Secondly, the continued disposal of waste in open trenches causes existing contamination to move further towards aquifers.
Long-term issues
Poor policies regarding the disposal of radioactive waste have meant that the risks created by this complex will continue for much longer than we can control it. There are many examples of how control over sites was lost over the course of several decades, and over the same period of time, serious dangerous situations were forgotten in the bowels of institutions. For example, disposal of toxic chemical materials, used for the production of weapons (including arsenic), were produced by the US military forces near the American University right in the US capital, and several decades later, residential buildings began to be built right on these landfills and next to them.
The Department of Energy recognizes that current plans for facilities such as SRS leave contaminants on site, creating hazards for an indefinite period of time (centuries or millennia). A 2000 study on long-term radioactive waste management by the National Research Council stated:
“The Landfill and Capacity Remediation Council has found that much of the Department of Energy's long-term waste management calculations are now questionable... All other things being equal, it is preferable to reduce pollutants rather than isolate them in anticipation of control measures, since the risk of failure of these measures is too great.”
First, the Department of Energy must urgently develop plans to dispose of landfilled waste and highly contaminated soil to minimize long-term harm from major sources of water pollution.
Secondly, it is necessary to abandon the cementation of residual radioactivity in containers with high-level waste in order to prevent storage huge amount radioactive waste near the Savannah River. The Department of Energy must commit to removing radioactive waste from the tanks and decommissioning the tanks. To do this, the tanks must be removed from the ground and placed in a safer storage facility to work on them. It's not about getting every last curie out of them, but about extracting as much radioactive waste as possible, given enough time and effort. Decommissioning tanks in this manner deserves to be done, even if it takes decades, as it will reduce the risk of contamination of water resources in the region.
Thirdly, we must not forget about environmental monitoring, geological and medical research. In addition, it is necessary to inform the local population about the dangers of eating fish and about measures aimed at reducing this danger. It is necessary to conduct more thorough studies of the diet of people living along the river. Savannah.
The Commission on the Effects of Low-Dose Radiation on Human Health (BEIR VII) must assess the harm that tritium causes to human health - in addition to the risk of developing cancer, including for pregnant women, fetuses, as well as the danger associated with combined exposure to the body tritium and toxic non-radioactive substances. And current standards for tritium contamination in water need to be revised and strengthened to protect future generations.
Location of the Semipalatinsk test site on the map of Kazakhstan
The Semipalatinsk nuclear test site was one of the two main nuclear test sites of the USSR in 1949-1989. During its existence, the landfill brought many problems to the residents living next to it, polluted large areas of Kazakhstan and Russia, and also contributed to people’s negative attitude towards products that came from contaminated areas, etc.
The test site was used for various tests of Soviet nuclear weapons - both in the ground (in adits and wells) and in the atmosphere. On August 12, 1953, thermonuclear weapons were tested here, in the atmosphere - at an altitude of 30 meters above the ground (the charge was located in a special tower). After this, rapid contamination of the test site and adjacent lands with radioactive elements began. November 22, 1955 another one thermonuclear bomb was dropped from an airplane and exploded at an altitude of 2 km above ground level.
From 1949 to 1989, at least 456 nuclear tests were carried out, in which at least 616 nuclear and thermonuclear devices were detonated, including at least 30 ground-based nuclear explosions and at least 86 air. Dozens of hydronuclear and hydrodynamic tests were also carried out (the so-called “NCR” - incomplete chain reactions). The region suffered significant environmental damage. The population was exposed to radiation, which over time caused illness, premature death, genetic diseases among local population. Data on this, collected by Soviet scientists during tests, are still classified.
Explosions were stopped only in 1989, and the landfill itself was closed in August 1991. Big role the popular anti-nuclear movement Nevada-Semipalatinsk and its leader Olzhas Suleimenov played a role in its closure. Closing the site did not reduce the threat.
Currently, the territory of the test site is still inhabited by people (and this is the only such place in the world). The territory of the landfill itself is not protected, despite the fact that it continues to store thousands of open and hidden threats for people.
Dozens of radioactive adits remain open - the military, who quickly left here, did not particularly bother with the conservation of the objects. Now any interested craftsman can get there, collect various radioactive “goods” and then sell it. Recently, there has been a tendency towards the disappearance of ownerless waste from the landfill. Where does he go? It is collected by local craftsmen and then sold to various junk buyers, who, in turn, put radioactive items on sale. It is unknown where the items sold by these buyers are now located. Potentially, anyone can become the owner of a radioactive item and will not even be able to guess where it came from. One of the most dangerous examples is radiation metal collected at a landfill.
According to scientists, the radiation activity of plutonium (which is now in abundance at the Semipalatinsk test site) gradually decreases by half every 24 thousand years (half-life occurs). And only in a million years will the radiation background of the lands in the vicinity of the Semipalatinsk test site become equal to the natural one.
IN hazardous areas former landfill The radioactive background still reaches 10,000 - 20,000 microroentgens per hour. Despite this, people still live at the landfill and use it for agricultural purposes. The territory of the landfill was not protected in any way and until 2006 it was not marked on the ground in any way. Only in 2005, under public pressure and on the recommendation of Parliament, work began on marking the boundaries of the landfill with concrete pillars. The population uses most lands of the landfill for grazing livestock. Thanks to the efforts of the public and scientists of the National Nuclear Center Republic of Kazakhstan, in 2008, work began on the creation of engineering protection structures for some of the most contaminated areas of the landfill to prevent access to them by the population and livestock. In 2009, army security was organized at the Degelen test site. The Semipalatinsk nuclear test site is the only one of many nuclear test sites in the world where the population lives and uses it for agricultural purposes.
Also injured Novosibirsk region, where the land is contaminated from radioactive fallout and there is a high risk oncological diseases, but the authorities did not and do not recognize this.
Territories affected by radioactive contamination:
Object of unknown purpose. The size can be judged by the size of the figure of a person sitting on the edge of the shaft:
The facility was destroyed as part of US-funded efforts to reduce the nuclear threat.
From the memories of eyewitnesses:
1955 First H-bomb. “We were sitting at a lecture in the assembly hall when the building swayed, the grates were knocked out of the furnaces, shock wave the windows in our auditorium were broken. The panic began. One student sitting by the window was surprised beautiful girl, shards of glass covered my entire face. A year later she died."
"Atomic" lake":
At the confluence of the two main rivers of the region - Shagan and Aschisu - on January 15, 1965, an underground explosion occurred, as a result of which the famous “Atomic” lake was formed.
In one of the Institute's booklets radiation safety and ecology, a brief description of this object was given: “An explosion with a power of 140 kilotons was produced, as a result of which a crater was formed with a depth of more than 100 meters and a diameter of 400 meters. In the area of the “Atomic” lake, radionuclide contamination of soils is observed at a distance of up to 3-4 kilometers in the northern direction.”
Raisa Kurmangagieva, a resident of Semey, says:
I remember they brought us fish from this lake. It was so big and delicious, people snapped it up in a matter of seconds. At that time it was very popular among the population.. We didn’t think about any radiation then. I’m already 80 years old and I’m still alive.
Here are photographs taken at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site during the period of active existence from 1949 to 1989, after its closure in 1991, as well as photographic materials related to the testing of nuclear weapons in the USSR and the USA, with modern types nuclear weapons and means of its delivery.
Open lesson Biological effects of radioactive transformations http://festival.1september.ru/articles/578779/
Life on the training ground. Liquidator of Chernobyl about environmental and social problems Semipalatinsk http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/transcript/18143...
All countries developing nuclear energy are divided into two camps on the issue of spent nuclear fuel management. Some of them process this valuable raw material - for example, France and Russia. Others, who do not have the appropriate level of processing technology, are inclined to long-term storage. The latter includes the United States, which has the largest fleet of nuclear power plants in the world.
Initially, the United States had a plan recycling fuel, which provided for the separation of uranium and plutonium and the disposal of only short-lived fission products into dumps. This would reduce waste volume by 90%.
But President Gerald Ford banned such reprocessing in 1976 because of the dangers of plutonium proliferation, and his successor Jimmy Carter reaffirmed the decision. The USA decided to follow the concept of an open fuel cycle.
Nuclear waste is stored in dry storage facilities at the Idaho National Laboratory. More than 60 thousand tons of spent fuel are in temporary storage in 131 locations around the country, mainly at operating reactors.
It was expected that the problem of nuclear waste disposal in the United States would be solved by the Yucca Mountain repository.
Dead-end tunnels in which waste containers will be located. Their shelf life will be measured in tens of thousands of years
The repository is located on federal lands adjacent to the Nevada Nuclear Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where about 900 atomic explosions took place. The repository is located in Yucca Mountain, a mountain range in south-central Nevada. The ridge consists of volcanic material (mostly tuff) ejected from a now cooled supervolcano. The Yucca Mountain storage facility will be located inside a long ridge, about 1,000 feet below the surface and 1,000 feet above the water table, and will have 40 miles of tunnels. The capacity will be approximately 77,000 tons of nuclear waste.
However, 22 years after the start of construction, the project, which cost $9 billion, was closed. Now many people believe that best solution- do nothing in the near future.
Background
History of construction nuclear storage in the Yucca Mountains began in 1957, when the American National Academy of Sciences prepared a recommendation for the creation of storage facilities for nuclear materials in geological formations, including: such facilities should be located in hard rocks and in a safe place, protected from natural Disasters, far from large settlements and sources of fresh water.
The first US regulation regulating this area was a law adopted in 1982. In particular, it was stipulated that energy companies must contribute 0.1 cents per kilowatt-hour of energy to the federal Nuclear Waste Trust Fund. The state, for its part, pledged to find places to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. The Energy Department forced the companies to sign contracts and promised to begin accepting payments in January 1998 (the estimated completion date for the project at the time).
Construction planning and exploration of this region have been underway since the early 1980s. For some time it was planned to establish a radioactive waste storage facility in Def Smith County, but this idea was later abandoned in favor of Yucca Mountain. Arrowhead Mills founder Jesse Frank Ford led the protests in Def Smith, arguing that the presence of the waste storage facility could contaminate the Ogallala Aquifer, the main source of drinking water for West Texas.
The repository was expected to open in 1998. Currently, a main tunnel 120 meters long and several small tunnels have been dug. The US Department of Energy (DOE) submitted a construction license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008.
The matter has stalled. For a long time, the Energy Department could not obtain a license from the independent state nuclear regulatory commission, which monitors all the country's projects in this area. In 2004, the court accepted one of the lawsuits filed by opponents of construction and ruled that the maximum permissible radiation doses included in the program should be revised. Initially, they were calculated for a period of up to 10 thousand years. Now the period has been increased to 1 million years. After it flared up new scandal: It turned out that experts hired in the 1990s falsified some data. A lot had to be redone.
Now experts say that even if the project is resumed - and this is still a big question - construction can continue no earlier than 2013. Only the main tunnel, 120 m long, and several dead-end tunnels have been dug. In July 2006, management stated that all work would be completed by 2017.
However, politics again intervened in the situation. During the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns, Democratic candidates promised to kill the project if they won. In 2006, congressional elections were held in the United States, as a result of which the Democrats received a majority in parliament. Their leader, Harry Reid, represents Nevada and has been a longtime opponent of supporters of building a storage facility in the state. At a press conference on the issue, the senator said: “This project will never come back to life.”
In 2009, the Barack Obama administration announced that the project was closed and proposed to stop funding it state budget. The refusal to continue the construction of a strategically important facility for the country caused many lawsuits from representatives nuclear industry and municipalities where temporary storage facilities for radioactive waste are located. The federal government, the state of Nevada, and a number of environmental and community groups took the opposite position.
Sad prospect
Speaking to reporters a few months ago, Principal Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sell said that by 2050, his department believes it is necessary to triple the number of nuclear power plants in the country, bringing it to 300. Recognizing that this task will be achieved after a 30-year break in the construction of such facilities will not be easy, he paid special attention to the problem of storing radioactive waste. Unless the industry improves dramatically, Sell said, the country will have to build nine more storage facilities like Yucca Mountain's this century.
Sakhalin Island east coast Asia - the farthest corner of Russia. This is the largest island of Russia, washed by the Seas of Okhotsk and Japan. The name "Sakhalin" comes from the Manchu name of the Amur River - "Sakhalyan-Ulla", which means "Rocks" black river».
The public sounded the alarm when an increase in cancer diseases became noticeable among the population of the Sakhalin region. According to the Ministry of Health of the Sakhalin Region, the mortality rate from neoplasms (including malignant ones) per 100,000 population in 2016 was 241 people, which is higher than the level previous year by 5.6% and higher than the average for the Russian Federation by 19.7%.
The Sea of Okhotsk around Sakhalin Island has long been turned into a huge nuclear dump. Only according to official data, in the period from 1969 to 1991. in the Seas of Okhotsk and Japan, at least 1.2 kCi of liquid radioactive waste (radioactive waste) was dumped, and solid radioactive waste was also sunk (this is 6868 containers, 38 ships and more than 100 individual large objects, general activity 6.9 kCi).
Ingestion of 1 Ci (curie) of strontium into the human body (for example, through contaminated fish) can lead to very severe consequences: cancer of the stomach, blood, bone marrow.
Sakhalin social activist, former director of Sakhalin-geoinform Vyacheslav Fedorchenko, referring to official documents of the Main Directorate of Navigation and Oceanography of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, told deputies of the Sakhalin regional Duma that by 1996, 39 RTGs were sunk in the Navy's Sea of Okhotsk (near lighthouses and in the area where Navy hydrographic detachments are based). Until 1998, there was no regulatory document that would oblige them to hand over radioisotope generators for recycling. "Being in an aggressive marine environment, RTG-type products self-destruct. Thus, sharp increase cancer in the Far Eastern Federal District may be a consequence of the authorized disposal of RTGs by flooding,” he believes.
RTG(radioisotope thermoelectric generator) - a radioisotope source of electricity that uses the thermal energy of radioactive decay. It was intended for power supply of unattended automatically operating navigation equipment - light beacons, radio beacons, illuminated navigation signs, radar transponder beacons located in hard-to-reach areas sea coast. Where the use of other power sources is difficult or practically impossible.
Compared to nuclear reactors that use a chain reaction, RTGs are much smaller and simpler in design. The output power of an RTG is low (up to several hundred watts) with low efficiency. But they have no moving parts and do not require maintenance throughout their entire service life, which can be decades.
By the way, in no case should you approach it closer than 500 meters when an RTG is detected! It was a matter of Murmansk region a few years ago. Thieves who had access to the RTG storage area dismantled several generators. All parts, including the depleted uranium protection, were stolen. The criminals were never found. Scientists have suggested that they are guaranteed not to be alive, since they received lethal dose irradiation.
According to V. Fedorchenko, a space satellite equipped with a nuclear power plant (unsuccessful launch in 1993 from Baikonur) and a Tu-95 strategic bomber with two nuclear bombs, which crashed in 1976 in Terpeniya Bay.
“Already now, virtually every caught fish contains radioisotope contamination with strontium-90 and cesium-133, which tend to accumulate in the human body. There is an environmental protection law prohibiting the dumping of radioactive waste into the sea, where sunken RTGs are classified as first class danger. This means that RTGs must be found and buried accordingly. This is the law. Everything else is demagogy,” says V. Fedorchenko. He added that otherwise, flooded installations will remain a hazard for another 600-800 years.
Today, according to Vyacheslav Fedorchenko, satellite images of the flooded strategic bomber Tu-95 s atomic bombs Many departments are on board. This documentary evidence appeared thanks to a method such as remote sensing of the Earth. Using this method, you can detect all sunken radioactive ships, submarines and aircraft. There are exact coordinates spacecraft with a nuclear power plant in Aniva Bay. The locations of 5 of the 38 sunken ships with nuclear waste in Terpeniya Bay are known. The Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Supervision, in its letter No. НУ-48/23, confirmed the flooding of nuclear facilities in certain areas of the Pacific Ocean.
The head of the hydrographic service of the Pacific Fleet, Gennady Nepomiluev, told deputies of the Sakhalin Regional Duma that the Pacific Fleet (PF) will continue the search for a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) sunk in the Sea of Okhotsk in 2018.
He said that in the 1970-1990s, the Pacific Fleet had 148 RTGs on its balance sheet. Of these, 147 are currently decommissioned and transferred to temporary storage in Far Eastern center on radioactive waste management. For all installations, the Pacific Fleet has documents showing where they are today and when they were disposed of.
In 1987, one RTG, while being delivered by helicopter to the Pacific Fleet lighthouse, was accidentally dropped into the sea near Cape Nizkiy due to unfavorable weather conditions and the risk of a helicopter crash. The coordinates of the flooding are unknown. The search for a generator has been conducted all these years, but no results have been produced. Since 2012, the Pacific Fleet has annually carried out monitoring in the area of Cape Nizkiy - diving inspection, echolocation, measuring radiation levels, taking soil and water samples. G. Nepomiluev emphasizes that this area is closed to fishing and other industrial activities until the RTG is found.
The Sakhalin Regional Duma sent appeals to Rosatom and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation based on this information from public figures, but these departments did not confirm the sinking of 39 RTGs, a bomber and a space satellite. However, the population of the region is concerned about the increase in cancer, and the reason for this trend is still unknown.
In 2013, the newspaper TVNZ“conducted its own investigation into the version of the sunken Tu-95 bomber with atomic bombs on board off the coast of Sakhalin. It's up to you to agree or disagree with the results of the investigation. .
It seems that the situation in the Sea of Okhotsk is being hushed up by those who are not interested in disclosing this information. During the period of the collapse of the army and navy after the 90s, the country was in complete anarchy, so it is not surprising that underwater radioactive burial sites appeared. Hiding the ends in water is just that suitable expression. But this problem must be solved!
Deputies of the Sakhalin Regional Duma at a meeting of the regional parliament on May 3, 2018 adopted the text of an appeal to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Both appeals relate to the same topic - to consider the issue of providing radio environmental safety Far Eastern seas and the need to rise from seabed potentially dangerous objects. It remains to wait for decisions to be made at the highest level.
For reference.
In October 2017, a meeting of the working group “Ensuring environmental safety and rational use natural resources"as part of the state commission on the development of the Arctic, chaired by the Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation S.E. Donskoy. It was devoted to the status of facilities with radioactive waste (RAW), spent nuclear fuel (SNF) sunk in the Arctic seas and possible financing options their recovery. It was announced at the meeting that 17,000 containers and 19 ships with radioactive waste, 14 nuclear reactors, five of which contain spent nuclear fuel, and 735 units of radioactive structures were sunk in the Arctic seas. Two nuclear submarines were also sunk there, one of which was unloaded. SNF.
They want to turn Ukraine into a nuclear dump November 12th, 2016
When you start talking to someone about the elections in the USA or “what’s going on with the crests,” I often hear the answer: what’s our business? Why are we discussing this so intensely? Of course, I would have a very strong discussion on this subject based on the first example, but regarding Ukraine, the conversation here is generally short - in general, everything that happens there is located at a distance of a couple of hundred kilometers from me. And the city of Alekseevka, Belgorod region, always reminds me of this as the “Chernobyl zone”. What kind of plans do the neighbors have?
According to previously concluded agreements, spent fuel from the Yuzhno-Ukrainskaya, Rivne and Khmelnitsky reactors nuclear power plants sent for processing to Russia. As you know, only two states on the planet have technology deep processing nuclear fuel: these are France and the Russian Federation. Ukrainian nuclear workers could store spent fuel only temporarily, placing the waste in the cooling pool located at the nuclear power plant. The so-called “wet” storage facility, in which spent fuel from Ukrainian reactors was stored, until recently existed only at the Zaporozhye station. Now Kyiv is talking about the construction of a huge “dry” burial ground on the territory of the Chernobyl zone, hushing up the chilling details of the prospects for further storage.
According to a nuclear energy specialist, former employee Ukrainian nuclear industry, and now the director of the Foundation for Historical Research "Osnovanie" Viktor Anpilogov, it was the Westinghouse company that lobbied in Kyiv for the speedy completion of the construction of a new dry spent fuel storage facility, since the issue of disposal of its own accumulated waste has long been on the agenda for Westinghouse and in fact is critical.
The Ukrainian authorities are trying to present this whole story as a big breakthrough in eliminating energy and other dependence on Russia, which supplies fuel for Ukrainian nuclear power plants and then takes the resulting waste for processing. However, the main problem is not at all that Kyiv is changing suppliers in pursuit of mythical budget savings.
Uncontrolled nuclear repository - in the center of Europe
US law does not allow nuclear waste to be stored in the United States. In this regard, the hyperactive work of American representatives in Kyiv is very justified. Their work to promote the Ukrainian market would not make sense if the most pressing issue with the place of subsequent disposal of production waste had not been resolved. In the case of the Kyiv authorities, the problem of recycling both spent nuclear fuel and all nuclear waste from the industry as a whole has actually already been solved, and in a straightforward, simple and, in terms of the long-term perspective, extremely cheap: deadly radioactive materials will be subjected to banal burial.
This process, as is obvious, will be controlled by American specialists - in connection with which the international community will quite rightly and very soon have questions regarding the amount of spent nuclear fuel brought to the very heart of of Eastern Europe, both in terms of applying at least some kind of control over the most dangerous object, and in terms of potential environmental consequences.
In Kyiv, they make no secret of the fact that the construction of a dry burial ground involved American company Holtec International, which previously had no experience in successfully implementing projects of this scale. In the international nuclear industry, Holtec International is known only as a manufacturer of special containers for spent nuclear fuel. What guided the Kyiv authorities when choosing a contractor is a question that, for obvious reasons, can be considered rhetorical.
The storage facilities for radioactive materials operating in the West have traditionally been located away from large cities, somewhere in salt mines or old mine workings. This was considered a reliable shelter in stable geological structures - however, only until recently: in Germany they are now sounding the alarm about cracks in the layers of one of the largest nuclear repositories. Water from underground sources penetrates into these cracks, but no one knows where the flows of dissolved radionuclides are then directed and where they will “float up”.
Meanwhile, the Chernobyl burial ground is a facility for storing hazardous materials in layers close to the surface. Experts are perplexed by the level of anti-terrorism protection, not to mention the potential threat of materials penetrating into ground and underground waters. Just look at the map of Nezalezhnaya: the burial ground will be located near Kyiv and the country’s main waterway - the Dnieper River.
Assistant professor High school corporate RANEPA Department Ivan Kapitonov believes that radioactive waste will most likely simply be buried in the exclusion zone, because Kyiv simply does not have the technological capacity for processing. Such “disposal”, so to speak, according to the expert, is dangerous both for the environment and from the point of view of terrorist threat- There are hardly any professionals who want to guard a burial ground that smells of death, even for a lot of money.
So who will be responsible for the security of the burial ground? And who is most interested in implementing this adventure, despite all the shortcomings of the project?
After them - even a flood
Experts estimate that the construction cost could reach $800 million. Funds will be kindly provided by banking structures from the USA - of course, for their own benefit. One can only guess how much the US economy will earn and how much more will be stolen in Kyiv, if the construction of the facility began under President Kuchma and could not be completed for 15 years.
But what is alarming here is not so much the scale of corruption, but rather the area of the facility itself. The capacity of the new central storage facility, which will soon be put into operation on the territory of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, exceeds the needs of the Ukrainian nuclear industry. According to information about the first versions of the project, more than 16 and a half thousand spent fuel elements (fuel rods) alone can be placed in the storage facility. Simply put, the volumes for which this facility is designed would take a very long time and very slowly to fill with waste from Ukrainian reactors alone. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to guess the true purpose of the new Chernobyl burial ground.
Russia has previously warned the international community about the potential consequences of this project, including at discussion platforms at the UN. Permanent Representative Russian Federation at the UN Vitaly Churkin expressed the position of the Russian Federation simply and clearly: “Apparently, infrastructure is being prepared for the disposal of foreign waste. In other words, we're talking about about turning Ukraine, by decision of its current authorities, into a nuclear dump.”
In this whole story, the position of experts remains unclear International agency on Nuclear Energy (IAEA): long years representatives of the international authority sought to check every millimeter at Iran's nuclear facilities - and regarding the consequences of Fukushima and the Chernobyl Central Storage Fuel Storage Facility, they seemed to have taken water into their mouths. The logic of developments suggests that the IAEA has formed a biased core of functionaries who, de facto, help promote the policy of US national interests. Versions that convincingly explain other motives are widely international community no one is in a hurry to present it yet.
It turns out that Washington is once again demonstrating the murderously cynical essence of its foreign policy doctrine: “Problems that arise after America’s actions not on American territory are not America’s problems.”
How much was stolen
It can be said without exaggeration that Chernobyl became a goldmine for Ukrainian officials. Initially, the construction of the protective arch was estimated at $700 million, but in the end only along the line European Bank reconstruction and development, Ukraine has received about 1.54 billion euros over the years. As Viktor Yanukovych, who was still acting prime minister of the country at the time, ironically noted,
The West allocated so much money to Ukraine for the arch that it could completely cover the entire city of Pripyat - however, the construction of financed international organizations objects passed at a snail's pace. Even now, when the Minister of Ecology Ostap Semerak announced with pathos the opening of the protective arch, which will take place on November 3, the completion of the construction of this facility is still far away. It is expected that the arch will be adjusted to the reactor by the end of the year, and Ukrainian engineers are already saying that since we are talking about a unique structure that has no analogues in the world, it is quite possible that during the installation process some design changes will need to be made to the facility - under which, of course, you can ask for more Western money.
However, if some progress can still be seen in the construction of the arch over the sarcophagus, the creation of the ISF has hardly budged since 2003 - although after the Orange Revolution the Ukrainian government, represented by Viktor Yushchenko, announced its intentions to begin the commercial purchase of nuclear fuel from the Westinghouse Electric Company , and the first commercial loading of Westinghouse fuel collectors into the third power unit of the South Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant took place in April 2010, already under the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych - who demonstratively sanctioned the course of continued cooperation with Westinghouse - mainly due to the active lobbying policy of this company, which does not hide its intention to capture the Ukrainian nuclear energy market, and worked with all leading representatives of the Kyiv political elite.
And the question of what to do with the spent fuel at the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant is already facing Ukraine head-on.
sources
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