(390.3797) WISE Amsterdam -The complex, 20 kilometers away from the town of Tomsk is covering an area the size of Paris. More than 100,000 inhabitants live in the town of Tomsk-7, another half million in the regional capitol of Tomsk.
It is reported so far that fire fighters have been contaminated and that "radioactivity has been scattered over the surrounding countryside".
According to a recent news report, Oleg Kotikov (Chair of the Tomsk Parliamentary Environment Commission), said that "a large amount of plutonium from dismantled weapons has been delivered to Tomsk-7, and the way it is being kept is bordering on a crime." The explosion occurred during plutonium separation activities and was apparently caused by a rapid increase in temperature in the tank after nitric acid was added to the uranium.
According to a statement received by Greenpeace Russia from Mr. Shoigu, Chairman of the Emergency Committee of the Russian Federation, the explosion at building N-15 has led to a dispersion of uranium and plutonium salts into the atmosphere.
Greenpeace has called on the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy to provide full details of the accident and to provide information and assistance to all affected people. Statements from various Russian agencies are offering conflicting reports about the extent of nuclear contamination. While earlier reports from the Ministry of Atomic Energy (MINATOM) had suggested that contamination had been confined to the Tomsk site, there are now reports from both the Emergency Committee of the Russian Federation and the State Nuclear Inspectorate suggesting that contamination has spread into the local countryside. According to newspaper reports (Trouw) an area of at least 120 km2 is contaminated: an area of "forest, mountains and few inhabitants". Jablokow, ecologist and advisor of Boris Jeltsin, said that the fire-fighters who were on duty on 6 April, are in great danger. He claims that measurements showed radiation levels inside the building of 30 roentgen/hr and 1 roentgen/hr in the directly surrounding.
Wind conditions, blowing to the Northeast/Northwest are apparently directing contamination toward the nearby town of Asino - the local district center. The regional capital Tomsk is situated some 14 kilometers from the plant.
The operations of the plant at Tomsk have been a carefully guarded secret since the 1950s when the plant was constructed to produce plutonium for the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Since that time, Tomsk alone has produced over 50 tons of plutonium. Russia currently has the world's largest stockpile of plutonium - an estimated 180 tons. While as much as 150 tons of this plutonium has been dedicated to military uses, the remaining 30 tons of so-called commercial plutonium is also usable in nuclear weapons. Control of this massive stockpile has led to serious international concern about the threat of nuclear proliferation.
Unaccountably, Russia has continued to produce separate plutonium at its formerly secret weapons facilities: plutonium continues to be separated in factories at Tomsk and Chelyabinsk. It is also believed that plutonium separation continues at Krasnoyarsk in Siberia which is also the site of a major new plutonium separation factory. This factory called RT-2 is currently 30 percent completed and could reprocess irradiated nuclear fuel from such foreign clients as South Korea and Iran.
"The plutonium plants at Tomsk, Chelyabinsk and Krasnoyarsk must be shut down" said Dmitry Tolmatsky of Greenpeace Russia. "It is madness for the Russian government to continue to separate plutonium in these secret plants held over from the Cold War. We are already awash in plutonium. As part of its commitment to nuclear non-proliferation the Russian government should immediately stop producing more plutonium," said Tolmatsky.
Thomas B. Cochran, Ph.D., senior scientist of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), noted that the radioactive and environmental pollution from Tomsk was already extensive before the accident. There are large releases (about 300,000 curies annually) of the isotope Kr-85 to the atmosphere at Tomsk. There are also large quantities of liquid high-level waste (10 million curies combined) of long-lived Strontium-90, Yitrium-90m, Cesium-137, and Barium-137m. More than 100 million curies of liquid high-level radioactive waste are being injected directly in deep geological formations. In the U.S. intermediate-level radioactive waste was disposed in this manner for several years but the practice was discontinued decades ago.
In addition, Tomsk has all the usual streams of toxic liquid waste, radioactive solid wastes, and occupational radiation exposures associated with chemical separation plants.
Sources:- Topic 100 Nuclear explosion at Tomsk-7: mts gn.nuclear April 7, 1993
- Topic 101 Tomsk Accident Releases Radiation: web:greenbase gp.press April 7, 1993
- Press release from the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), Topic 445 NRDC: Tomsk Accident: igc:fbp nuc.facilities April 10, 1993
- Trouw (NL), 8 & 9 April 1993
Contact: Elisabeth Mealey: Greenpeace Communications: Tel: 071-833 0600.
Greenpeace Russia (Moscow), Dmitry Tolmatsky or Eduard Gismatullin, Tel: +7 (095) 258-39-50,
251-90-73
Greenpeace (Paris), Damon Moglen, Tel: 33-1-47-70-46-89
Tom Cochran or Sarah Silver, 202-783-7800, both of the Natural Resources Defense Council
International Nuclear Safeguards totally inadequate to deal with Tomsk 7 type
accident The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has never carried out a safety inspection of the Russian Tomsk 7 military reprocessing facility, Friends of the Earth revealed on April 7. The IAEA has informed Friends of the Earth that it first learnt of the accident from the media at least twelve hours before the Russian authorities formally informed the agency that an accident had occurred. According to the IAEA, the Russian authorities are not required to notify them if they assess that there are no transborder implications of an accident. The IAEA has offered assistance but the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy has not replied. The Ministry has classified the incident as a Level 3 (Serious Incident) on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The Ministry claims that the "incident" did not have major off-site consequences and has only led to localized contamination for several hundred meters around the plant. However, information from other sources suggests that the accident was much worse, resulting in a major release of radioactivity leading to extensive contamination around the plant (see article). Friends of the Earth scientists consider that, if this information is confirmed, the accident may be reclassified as a level 5 (i.e. an accident with off-site consequences) or above. The IAEA safety remit only applies to invited inspections of civilian nuclear reactors. It has no powers to inspect military nuclear facilities such as Tomsk 7. The Agency's Director of Public Information, Mr. David Kidd, has informed Friends of the Earth that the agency has "no knowledge" of the safety systems at the Tomsk 7 plant. Dr. Patrick Green, Friends of the Earth's Radiation Campaigner said: "The Tomsk accident has revealed a disturbing loophole in the international nuclear safety regime leaving the IAEA completely powerless to investigate. This is unacceptable. We need a nuclear police, not a nuclear poodle. All nuclear facilities must be open to international safeguards so that the scale of the daunting nuclear legacy can be assessed". Source: igc:fbp nuc.facilities Written 6:27 p.m. Apr. 7, 1993 by foeinfo@gn.apc.org in
igc:foe.press |
Tomsk Greens Have Long Warned About An Accident Boris Nekrasov, "Ecologicheskaya Initiative" April 8, 1993 There was an explosion on the 6th of April around 1pm local time at the 15th unit of the radio-chemical plant of the Siberian Chemical Kombinant in an underground technological/mechanical container that contained discharges of uranium aerosols and small doses of plutonium according to the statement of A. Adama, chairman of the Tomsk Oblast Ecological Committee. That evening, representatives of the Kombinant quickly informed the Tomsk residents that the accident was confined to a local area and pollution did not reach beyond the industrial building. It was confirmed that there was a mechanical problem in the chemical environment of the unit, a part which for days should have been shut down for regular maintenance. More information was made available to the Tomsk residents on the 7th. They were told that zirconium, niobium, and ruthenium were discharged, the radiation level at the place of the accident was 30 mili-roentgens, and a radiation level of 400 micro-roentgens was detected in a 4 to 6 km area on the road that leads to the village of Samuski (about 29 km). (The permitted level is 15 micro-roentgen, wisedb) A cloud with unknown composition, but which has the character of a radioactive cloud was moving towards Yeniseika, a town in the Krasnoyarsk Kray, at a rate of 36km/hr. The level of radiation pollution in Tomsk has not been disclosed. The accident has been classified at 3 on the 7 mark international scale of danger (serious incidents are ones in which personnel have not been radiated). The director of the department of environmental protection, Andreev, stated in a television interview that such accidents used to happen before but this was the first time a container with radioactive wastes exploded. The road to the village of Samusk has been closed. Six military groups are removing the snow from the area. Inhabitants of the neighboring village of Georgievka were ordered to remain in their houses and wait for the military to evacuate them. Iodine is now in high demand in the region, as it is proposed as a treatment for radiation poisoning. Business people have offered to bring a barrel of beer with iodine to the village of Naumovka if the inhabitants would buy it. All the iodine has been bought in the village of Oktyabrsky. Iodine also was given to children in Tomsk. In general, the city administration is confused and does not know how to react to the accident. The population is not properly informed about the situation and the phone number of the emergency headquarters has not been given out. Rumors, as a result, are widespread throughout the city and add to the degree of confusion. According to unverified information, the Tomsk airport is full of people trying to leave the city and people are being checked out of the hospitals with urgency. On the 6th of April, the "Ecological Initiative" proposed holding a referendum in the city by which the inhabitants could express their opinions on nuclear warheads storage in Tomsk. Unfortunately, they were 5 votes short of adopting this proposal. The Roltom Society in Tomsk has also proposed holding a local referendum on the following issues: to close the radiochemical plant and to not allow construction of new nuclear power engineering units and storage areas for nuclear warheads. The regional newspaper, Narodniya Tribuna, published Roltom's proposal. Source: Topic 449 Direct Report from Tomsk CIS igc:dyurman nuc.facilities 7:07 am Apr.
12, 1993 Direct from Tomsk via isarmos@glas.apc.org Contact: Ecological Initiative Tomsk, 630 055 g. Tomsk ul. 30-letiya Pobedy d.g kv.47 |
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