Valley polluted by nuclear waste part of Russia's legacy of neglect
KRT Wire | 05/26/2005 | Valley polluted by nuclear waste part of Russia's legacy of neglect: " Posted on Thu, May. 26, 2005
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Valley polluted by nuclear waste part of Russia's legacy of neglect
BY ALEX RODRIGUEZ
Chicago Tribune
MUSLYUMOVO, Russia - (KRT) - The Techa River meanders through this tiny village of ramshackle cabins and garden plots on the southern edge of the Ural Mountains, seemingly a source of life for a sleepy farming hamlet that has lived off the land for nearly three centuries.
For decades, villagers swam in the Techa, ate its carp and pike, and grazed their cattle along the banks, unaware that the river had become a conduit for lethal radioactive waste from a Russian plutonium plant upstream.
Today, Russians in the region surrounding the plant get thyroid cancer at nearly twice the nation's average rate, according to a recent study. The incidence of lung cancer in the Techa region is 70 percent higher than the average for Russia; the rate of colon cancer is 44 percent higher.
'We think of ourselves as mice - laboratory mice,' said Vera Ozhogina, 57, a retired math teacher from Muslyumovo. She blames the plant for the heart disease that killed her 47-year-old husband and now afflicts her 31-year-old daughter.
Located near the source of the Techa River in the closed city of Ozersk, the sprawling Mayak complex once was a vital cog in the Soviet Union's rush to build up its nuclear arsenal. Mayak produced 73 tons of plutonium from 1948 until 1990, supplying plutonium for the first Soviet atomic bomb.
Plutonium is one of the world's deadliest substances; a millionth of a gram is enough to cause cancer. Its half-life is 24,000 years.
Mayak and other weapons production plants that made up the Soviet military complex existed behind a Cold War shroud of secrecy, and the extent of the harm they caused to the environment was not fully disclosed until after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. By the early 1990s i"
Click to learn more...
Valley polluted by nuclear waste part of Russia's legacy of neglect
BY ALEX RODRIGUEZ
Chicago Tribune
MUSLYUMOVO, Russia - (KRT) - The Techa River meanders through this tiny village of ramshackle cabins and garden plots on the southern edge of the Ural Mountains, seemingly a source of life for a sleepy farming hamlet that has lived off the land for nearly three centuries.
For decades, villagers swam in the Techa, ate its carp and pike, and grazed their cattle along the banks, unaware that the river had become a conduit for lethal radioactive waste from a Russian plutonium plant upstream.
Today, Russians in the region surrounding the plant get thyroid cancer at nearly twice the nation's average rate, according to a recent study. The incidence of lung cancer in the Techa region is 70 percent higher than the average for Russia; the rate of colon cancer is 44 percent higher.
'We think of ourselves as mice - laboratory mice,' said Vera Ozhogina, 57, a retired math teacher from Muslyumovo. She blames the plant for the heart disease that killed her 47-year-old husband and now afflicts her 31-year-old daughter.
Located near the source of the Techa River in the closed city of Ozersk, the sprawling Mayak complex once was a vital cog in the Soviet Union's rush to build up its nuclear arsenal. Mayak produced 73 tons of plutonium from 1948 until 1990, supplying plutonium for the first Soviet atomic bomb.
Plutonium is one of the world's deadliest substances; a millionth of a gram is enough to cause cancer. Its half-life is 24,000 years.
Mayak and other weapons production plants that made up the Soviet military complex existed behind a Cold War shroud of secrecy, and the extent of the harm they caused to the environment was not fully disclosed until after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. By the early 1990s i"
posted by Greta Jane at Thursday, May 26, 2005
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