Although Russia has some extremely serious environmental contamination problems due to the former Soviet Union's nuclear weapon's program, the situation is not as bad as many Western analysts had feared.
That is the general conclusion of the first series of independent studies of the environmental legacy of the Soviet program that have been conducted by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. The results of these studies were summarized at a news conference at the Minatom (Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy) headquarters in Moscow on Feb. 23 and are the subject of a subsequent symposium held on Feb. 24.
Called the Radiation Safety of the Biosphere Project, the IIASA effort was directed by Frank L. Parker, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University, and Vladimir M. Novikov, professor of physics at Moscow State University and head of the Nuclear Power Problems Laboratory at the Kurchatov Institute, a Russian research center.
One of the unfortunate legacies of the Cold War is the radioactive contamination left from the production and testing of nuclear weapons in the United States and the former Soviet Union. A number of major studies have been conducted in the United States that estimate the magnitude and impact of these releases, but the process of understanding the environmental significance of the releases in the Soviet Union is only beginning.
The first official information that became available in the Soviet Union dealt with the Mayak site, a spent fuel reprocessing center in the southern Ural Mountains, where high exposures to both workers and the public in the early years of operation resulted in many cases of chronic radiation sickness. Many western observers feared that similar conditions might exist at the two large Siberian spent fuel reprocessing centers Krasnoyarsk-26, also known as the Mining and Chemical Combine (MCC), and Tomsk-7, also known as the Siberian Chemical Combine (SCC). Together these three sites account for 99.8 percent of all the radioactive waste releases in the old Soviet Union.
The IIASA studies have shown that hazardous conditions from surface discharges at the Mining and Chemical Combine and at the Siberian Chemical Combine are substantially below those at the Mayak site. The results are reported in the IIASA study Releases of Radionuclides to Surface Waters at Krasnoyarsk-26 and Tomsk-7, R-99-3 dated May 1999. No offsite contamination resulted from the subsurface discharges at the Mining and Chemical Combine. Concentrations within the aquifer exceed permissible drinking water concentrations, however, the likelihood of such use is deemed to be small. The results are reported in two peer-reviewed articles in the Russian Academy of Sciences Journal Geology of Ore Deposits.
In addition, Parker and Novikov will report on the program's analysis of the radiological risks posed by nuclear submarine facilities on the Kola Peninsula and the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan.
The IIASA investigations were done in collaboration with institutes of Minatom (the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy), the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Kurchatov Institute, as well as with site and local administrative authorities. The studies analyzed the human health impacts of past discharges of radioactive materials. Although the studies were done with limited data provided by the Russian participants, the data was validated whenever possible with information from independent sources. Due to the limited database, generic models were used with site specific data, although IIASA researchers developed some new models specifically for the study.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
Radiation Safety of the Biosphere Project
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Schlossplatz 1
A-2361 Laxenburg Austria
Internet: www.iiasa.ac.at
The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis was established in 1972 as a place for Soviet and American scientists and engineers to work together on major problems of mutual interest. Today, IIASA is a non-governmental, non-profit research institute that conducts interdisciplinary scientific studies on environmental, economic, technological and social issues.
URLs:
IIASA home page:
www.iiasa.ac.at
Prof. Frank L. Parker's home page
www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/~ceeinfo/parkerfl.html