Siberia-Environment: Plans to Build More Nuclear Plants Assailed
Inter Press Service
IRKUTSK, Russia, (Jul. 23) IPS - Young environmentalist Alexei Toropov
says
he is dedicating his life to fighting for the safe clean-up of
radioactive
waste in one of the world's largest nuclear -- and arguably the most
contaminated -- complexes, near his hometown of Tomsk, in Western
Siberia.
So when he discovered that the government was planning to build yet
another
nuclear reactor nearby, for the sole purpose of heating water in his city
and
surrounding towns, he quickly fought back, arguing that Russia should
instead
make use of the country's abundant natural gas reserves.
But when he found out that a neighboring Russian state of Altay was
planning
to sell most of its supply of clean-burning natural gas to China, instead
of
for use domestically, he said he could only shake his head in disbelief.
"We already have the largest nuclear waste storage site in the world," he
said in a recent interview. "Russia should use this gas in Russia as an
alternative to building more unsafe nuclear plants."
Toropov lives just 16 kilometers south of the gated city of Seversk,
formerly
called Tomsk 7, which was part of the nuclear archipelago of ten secret
weapons research and production centers of the former Soviet Union.
The nuclear complex, now called the Siberian Chemical Complex, includes
two
working reactors (and several rusting relics), a uranium-enrichment plant
and
a reprocessing facility.
It also contains the world's biggest underground storage site for nuclear
waste, into which highly radioactive waste from the reprocessing facility
is
still being pumped. A chemical plant at which warhead components were
once
made, using plutonium, also operates on the premises.
According to Toropov, the 40-year-old plutonium-producing reactors are
the
most immediate problem. The two reactors are graphite-moderated and
water-cooled, precursors of the design used at Chernobyl. Enormous stacks
of
graphite blocks surround vertical rods containing fuel. There are no
containment vessels, no emergency core-cooling systems, he says.
"It was the design from which the Russians learned the lessons they
subsequently incorporated in Chernobyl," notes Matthew Bunn of Harvard
University, as quoted in the Economist magazine.
The graphite is now swelling and cracking as a result of years of
irradiation
which creates the risk of another Chernobyl, says Toropov. If the rods or
tubes in the core begin to buckle, engineers cannot control the speed of
the
reaction by withdrawing the fuel rods, he argues.
In 1993, there was an accident at the reprocessing plant in Seversk which
contaminated three villages to the northeast. A cloud of about 400 micro
roentgens per hour of gamma radiation was released into the air. To put t
his
amount in perspective, the plant, by law, is supposed to alert the public
if
there is a constant release of 60 micro roentgens per hour.
Fortunately, says Toropov, the wind that day was blowing away from Tomsk
where about half a million people live.
While officials deny that any harm was caused, villagers continue to
complain
of high levels of illness. New cases of thyroid cancer in the Tomsk
region
have risen sharply. In the early 1980s, there were three or four new
cases
each year; in the second half of the 1990s, more than 50.
A recent study by scientists in Moscow found that men living near the
plant
had drastically low sperm counts.
Since 1993, there have been four other smaller accidents, says Toropov
who
said he learned of these toxic releases through scientists working in the
plant who leaked the information to him.
Toropov, 22, like about 40 other young environmentalists throughout
Siberia,
travelled here this month to Irkutsk to participate in a two-week
environmental monitoring training program. While here, he has shared his
nuclear monitoring project of the Tomsk Ecological Student Inspection
(TESI),
an environmental organization.
On a recent radiation inspection near the plant, TESI found that a
migratory
duck swimming in nearby Black Lake, contained 2,100 micro roentgens per
hour.
"If a person ate this duck, it would be pretty likely that they would die
of
cancer in a few years," he said, adding that the bird has been known to
migrate as far as India to avoid the icy Siberian winters.
TESI has also reported mutations in the vegetation surrounding the
"buffer
zone" around the complex.
"People from Seversk continue to fish in Black Lake and pick berries and
mushrooms near the plant even though there are signs saying not to do so
in
the area," says Toropov.
In 1994, Vice-President Al Gore signed an agreement with Viktor
Chernomyrdin,
then Russia's prime minister, to eventually close down the old reactors
in
Seversk.
In order to provide needed heat to the cities and towns in the cold
Siberian
region, the government, in 1996, proposed building a new nuclear power
plant,
known as AST 500. The enabling law required a public hearing on the
project,
but Toropov says that people in Tomsk only found out about the event a
few
days before they had to register for the hearing, which was held this
past
January.
Dozens of present and former workers at the nuclear complex, who live in
Seversk, came out to support the project. While members of TESI spoke out
against the plant, saying they favored exploiting Russia's gas reserves
instead, local media reported that the public strongly supported AST 500.
"We didn't have any time to prepare, (for the hearing)," Toropov says. He
is
now calling for a new public hearing to be held in Tomsk about the
proposal.
But he worries that the authorities will approve the plant before a new
hearing is conducted.
Besides robbing the Tomsk region of an alternative to nuclear energy,
Toropov
argues that the plan to ship natural gas to China also threatens wildlife
since it will require the construction of a pipeline through the Ukok
Plateau
in the Altay Mountains, named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998.
Home to the few remaining snow leopards in Siberia, the plateau is known
for
its rich biodiversity and ancient archaeological sites.
"Right now there are no pipelines, major roads or train lines that
traverse
the region like the proposed pipeline would," he says.
Toropov says Tomsk would have less need for new energy if authorities
concentrated more on improving the energy efficiency in the region.
In 1994 a study found that 55 percent of the heat produced in frosty
Tomsk
was wasted. Russian buildings leak energy like sieves: they use 425
kilowatt-hours per square meter a year, compared with 135 in Sweden and
120
in the Unite d States.
In Tomsk, the potential for heat loss is even worse, argues Toropov. The
pipes that currently carry fuel around the district's heating network
from
the nuclear plants to Seversk and Tomsk are completely un-insulated.
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