Russian
nuclear authority Rosatom rejected a report by Norwegian environmental group
Bellona that tanks of spent nuclear fuel in Russia's
Arctic were leaking and risked setting off an
uncontrolled chain reaction. Bellona, a whistleblower on Soviet and Russian
nuclear dumping activities, quoted a Rosatom publication as saying that
degradation of cement that encases nuclear waste tanks on the Kola peninsula
has already allowed salt water to seep in.
It said the salt water was mixing with
radioactive rods in tanks at the Andreeva
Bay facility, and could set off a
chain reaction whose fall-out could spread across northern Europe
in a worst-case scenario. "I can state officially that there have been no
situations which might threaten the environment," a Rosatom official told
Reuters on Friday.
Nils Boehmer, an atomic physicist and head of
Bellona's Russian section, said the report in Rosatom's Atomnaya Energiya
publication warned that salt water was causing uranium particles to fall off
rods and settle on the bottom of tanks. The concentration of such particles was
not known, he said, but according to the Rosatom report if it topped 5-10
percent, it could trigger an uncontrolled chain reaction. "This could lead
to the release of a lot of energy over a short amount of time and contaminate a
10-kilometre radius around the facility," Boehmer told Reuters.
Danger would grow exponentially if reactions
spread from one tank to another within the site -- the largest for radioactive
waste and spent nuclear fuel from Russia's Northern Fleet. "In
such a case, the radioactive fallout could be higher and affect northern Europe
to a greater degree than the region was hit by the Chernobyl disaster," Boehmer said.
Leaks from Andreeva Bay
facilities have already led to radioactive contamination of the nearby fjord,
Ballona said. "We know how big the powder keg is, but we don't know how
long the burning fuse is," Bellona's Alexander Nikitin, a former Russian
navy engineer jailed in the 1990s for exposing Russian nuclear waste practices,
told Norwegian daily Aftenposten. Bellona called on Norway
and other countries to push Russia
to resolve the problem. The Nordics have already pumped millions of dollars to
help improve safety of Russian nuclear power plants in the wake of the Chernobyl melt-down in
1986.
(
Planet
Ark, 04/06/2007