News
Publish date: January 21, 2005
News
December last year, Chelyabinsk region governor Petr Sumin allocated 1 million rubles (about $35,000) for the local program on coping the radiation accidents’ consequences at the Mayak plant. The money for the program come from the extra income of the local budget and taxes from the Mayak plant after reprocessing the foreign spent nuclear fuel, UralPolit.ru reported.
The money will be spent on construction of the livestock pond in Muslyumovo village near polluted Techa River. Techa reservoirs contain over 340 million cubic meters of the radioactive water. All this water can penetrate the open water system during a spring flood. The local program on overcoming of the radiation accidents’ consequences at the Mayak plant was adopted by the local parliament in 2002 and should be completed in 2005.
Muslyomovo is the most exposed village due to Mayak plant’s former discharge practices. Muslyomovo is situated 30 km downstream of Mayak Chemical Combine, and in 1949 it had a population of 4,000 inhabitants. By 1990, the number had fallen to 2,500 residents. The effective dose received by Muslyomovo’s villagers is approximately 2.8 Sv, and the effective dose received by children is 0.05 to 0.1 Sv/y. The residents of Muslyomovo have been subject to compulsory blood and bone marrow testing. The results and findings from these tests however, were kept secret until 1992.
In 1994, the administration of Chelyabinsk County passed a resolution to evacuate those of Muslyumovo’s inhabitants who had suffered the most, and to build a new village farther away from the Techa River. On August 7 1997, the Chelyabinsk county administration signed a decree on re-settlement of village Muslyumovo and adjacent areas downriver of Mayak nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.
However, nothing came out of these and other decisions.
Throughout the past year, our mission at the Bellona Environmental Transparency Center has focused on two key, but intertwined issues—nuclear and radiation safety as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, and the worldwide influence of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, which itself is actively involved in the war and has participated in the occupation of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant.
At the beginning of the year, reports in the German and Russian press suggested an approximate 70% increase in uranium imports from Russia to Germany in 2024. But does this reflect broader European trends? It does not. Overall, imports of uranium and nuclear fuel from Russia to Western countries actually dropped sharply in 2024. Unlike the situation in Germany, this is already an established trend.
A Lingen, Germany plant could begin producing nuclear fuel in cooperation with a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear corporation, which is directly involved in the war in Ukraine and occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.