Ten armed policemen are currently guarding Kyrgyzstan's largest storage
facility for uranium production wastes, in Kara-Balta, to protect them from
local 'stalkers' on the hunt for nonferrous scrap metal in radioactive dumps.
About 40 million cubic metres of uranium production wastes have now been
stockpiled.
The landscape is almost lunar. Everywhere there are
radioactive hills and beaches. There are also 20 settlements, each with more
than 100 people, in a radius of 20 km around the tailing dump. Many radioactive
beaches are exposed, without a layer of inactive ground, and small radioactive
parts are easily blown away by wind from the dumps.
At the plant dump
there are barrels for chemicals, fragments of chemical glassware, pieces of
metal, multicolored piles of used reagents. There are narrow trenches among the
piles of technological trash. Somebody was digging, looking for something:
industrial wastes like factory chimneys, metal objects, disused equipment with a
high radioactive content are buried here. Much of the equipment that has been
thrown out is made of stainless steel and nonferrous metals.
Below the
slope of the pit poor people, looking like homeless, see us and scatter like
cockroaches. One of them, hunting for (radioactive) metal, dives into something
that looks like a shelter of branches built directly on the open slope of the
pit. We catch him. He introduces himself as Sanyok. He is a representative of
the 'local stalkers', as the scavengers of radioactive dumps are referred to in
Kyrgyzstan.
He is unemployed, handicapped, alcoholic, covered with ashes
and soot – and radiation too. We asked him whether he was afraid of radiation.
He replied that dying of starvation was worse, though he used to be afraid of
radiation just like other people. In those days, he had worked at the repair
plant.
When he became handicapped, he lost his job. Starvation pushed him
to climb under the electrified wire to collect radioactive scrap metal. Why not,
he said, if it is earns you good money? How much can he dig a day, we ask? It's
like playing cards, he replied: sometimes you're lucky, other times you burrow
like a mole all day and find only some nasty aluminum pan.
The people who
live here are all poor and homeless. They cook on dirty pans, and prepare a kind
of drug from extra-strong tea in tins and broken cups. Sometimes there are more
than 40 to 60 people here, including women and children.
A protection
agency official who had accompanied us appeared. A dosimeter sang and clacked in
his hands. Sanyok stared with interest at this unknown device with a figure of
450 micro-roentgens per hour on its indicator board: it meant nothing to him.
The management of the KGRK tries to stop uninvited guests. But the
barbed wire gets cut and torn down, and guards are physically
threatened.
But profits from gold affinage and enriching Kazakh uranium
will be not be enough to deal properly with the uranium monster inherited from
the USSR. Top priority work on the recultivation of the dump is estimated at
150,000 US dollars.
Meanwhile 'stalking' seems to be becoming a real
business in Kyrgyzstan. In Min-Kush and Kadgi-Say, people dig up the radioactive
dumps in the hope of finding metal. In Mayli-Say they excavate the site of the
old concentrating mill for producing uranium, which was demolished and buried.
And now this radiation fever is spreading from Kara-Balta along the Chu valley,
which is a land of plenty...
facility for uranium production wastes, in Kara-Balta, to protect them from
local 'stalkers' on the hunt for nonferrous scrap metal in radioactive dumps.
About 40 million cubic metres of uranium production wastes have now been
stockpiled.
The landscape is almost lunar. Everywhere there are
radioactive hills and beaches. There are also 20 settlements, each with more
than 100 people, in a radius of 20 km around the tailing dump. Many radioactive
beaches are exposed, without a layer of inactive ground, and small radioactive
parts are easily blown away by wind from the dumps.
At the plant dump
there are barrels for chemicals, fragments of chemical glassware, pieces of
metal, multicolored piles of used reagents. There are narrow trenches among the
piles of technological trash. Somebody was digging, looking for something:
industrial wastes like factory chimneys, metal objects, disused equipment with a
high radioactive content are buried here. Much of the equipment that has been
thrown out is made of stainless steel and nonferrous metals.
Below the
slope of the pit poor people, looking like homeless, see us and scatter like
cockroaches. One of them, hunting for (radioactive) metal, dives into something
that looks like a shelter of branches built directly on the open slope of the
pit. We catch him. He introduces himself as Sanyok. He is a representative of
the 'local stalkers', as the scavengers of radioactive dumps are referred to in
Kyrgyzstan.
He is unemployed, handicapped, alcoholic, covered with ashes
and soot – and radiation too. We asked him whether he was afraid of radiation.
He replied that dying of starvation was worse, though he used to be afraid of
radiation just like other people. In those days, he had worked at the repair
plant.
When he became handicapped, he lost his job. Starvation pushed him
to climb under the electrified wire to collect radioactive scrap metal. Why not,
he said, if it is earns you good money? How much can he dig a day, we ask? It's
like playing cards, he replied: sometimes you're lucky, other times you burrow
like a mole all day and find only some nasty aluminum pan.
The people who
live here are all poor and homeless. They cook on dirty pans, and prepare a kind
of drug from extra-strong tea in tins and broken cups. Sometimes there are more
than 40 to 60 people here, including women and children.
A protection
agency official who had accompanied us appeared. A dosimeter sang and clacked in
his hands. Sanyok stared with interest at this unknown device with a figure of
450 micro-roentgens per hour on its indicator board: it meant nothing to him.
The management of the KGRK tries to stop uninvited guests. But the
barbed wire gets cut and torn down, and guards are physically
threatened.
But profits from gold affinage and enriching Kazakh uranium
will be not be enough to deal properly with the uranium monster inherited from
the USSR. Top priority work on the recultivation of the dump is estimated at
150,000 US dollars.
Meanwhile 'stalking' seems to be becoming a real
business in Kyrgyzstan. In Min-Kush and Kadgi-Say, people dig up the radioactive
dumps in the hope of finding metal. In Mayli-Say they excavate the site of the
old concentrating mill for producing uranium, which was demolished and buried.
And now this radiation fever is spreading from Kara-Balta along the Chu valley,
which is a land of plenty...