- MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia
has shut a reprocessing plant at one of its biggest nuclear sites over
fears it is contaminating drinking water, officials said on Monday, in
an unprecedented crackdown on crumbling nuclear facilities.
-
- The plant is part of the Mayak facility in the formerly
closed Urals city of Ozyorsk, the site of the worst nuclear disaster on
Russian territory five decades ago, when hundreds of thousands of people
were exposed to radiation.
-
- Russia's nuclear safety agency, Gosatomnadzor, denied
plant 235 an operating licence for 2003 over fears that radioactive waste
dumped into the nearby Lake Karachay and in specially built water tanks
was tainting local water supplies.
-
- Environmental group Greenpeace says anyone who stands
by the lake for more than an hour could be exposed to fatal levels of radiation,
which they say are 350,000 times higher than normal.
-
- "Plant 235 is not working at the moment because
it did not respect safety rules. We are now deciding on what conditions
need to be fulfilled so that work can resume," said Andrei Kislov,
a senior official at Gosatomnadzor.
-
- A tank containing radioactive waste exploded at Mayak
in 1957 and exposed 472,000 people to radiation in an accident long kept
secret by Soviet authorities. Ecologists greeted the move to close the
plant as rare proof that Russia is finally coming to grips with the nuclear
burden it inherited from the Soviet Union.
-
- "Though Gosatomnadzor has done some good things,
this is the first time we have seen a step at this level," said Greenpeace
energy expert Vladimir Chuprov. "Unfortunately, there is a high possibility
that a licence will be granted soon, given the strong nuclear energy lobby
pressuring the authorities.
-
- "The only way to solve the problem is to shut down
the plant once and for all. If the administration says they will solve
the problem but leave the plant open, they are lying. The technology for
this to be possible simply does not exist."
-
- The lake is several times more radioactive than the area
surrounding Ukraine's Chernobyl plant, the site of the world's worst civil
nuclear accident.
-
- The plant has dumped radioactive waste in the area since
the 1950s, and it is unclear why a decision has been taken now.
-
- Russian environment pressure group Ecodefence said by
improving standards to satisfy U.S. State Department rules, the Russians
hoped to win lucrative contracts to reprocess U.S. spent nuclear fuel.
Some 80 percent of the world's spent nuclear fuel stockpiles are under
U.S. jurisdiction.
-
- Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly
prohibited without the written consent of Reuters Limited
- Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
|
