World Bank to reduce uranium waste danger in Ferghana Valley

The World Bank on Monday pledged to reduce the danger uranium waste sites posed to residents of the densely populated Ferghana Valley, which is shared by three of the former Soviet Central Asian countries - Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Joop Stoutjesdijk, the World Bank's environment expert, told IRIN in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, on Monday that there would two grants to help address the issue of uranium waste dumps in the southern Kyrgyz town of Mayluu-Suu. "The first one, US $478,000, is provided by the Japanese government via the World Bank for the implementation of the natural disasters prevention project, with the main goal of preparing detailed documentation of the issue," he said, adding that the local and international staff from scientific institutions would work on it for six months. After documentation, practical work on rehabilitating uranium waste dumps was expected to be launched in 2004, for which the World Bank aimed to provide some $5 million. But Kyrgyz emergency experts have estimated the total necessary for the full rehabilitation of the radioactive dumps to be $17 million. The World Bank announced its willingness to provide resources for the rehabilitation of radioactive waste sites during a meeting of regional scientists and international experts held in Bishkek in April under the aegis of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. According to some sources, the uranium-contaminated soil and rock in Mayluu-Suu could affect some 3 million people in the Ferghana Valley if the Mayluu-Suu river were to become contaminated with radioactivity; inasmuch as the area where the dumps are located is prone to flooding and landslides, a large part of the valley could thereby be rendered uninhabitable. According to the Kyrgyz emergency ministry, 2 million cubic metres of uranium waste remains buried in 23 sites and dumped in 13 locations around Mayluu-Suu. Huge masses of torium-230 with a decay period of 80,000 years, radium-226 with a half-decay period of 1,600 years, uranium waste and its long-lasting isotopes with a half-decay period of hundreds of thousands of years were buried there. Stoutjesdijk noted that the project would help diminish radioactive risk in the area, but that local people should not expect a cure-all. "When we were in Mayluu-Suu town, residents very often asked us: Can you solve all our current problems? It is very important to know not only for Mayluu-Suu residents but for the country's whole population that with $5 million we cannot solve all current problems," he explained. The development of uranium mines in Kyrgyzstan started after World War II, when the Cold War race to nuclear parity with the USA spurred the Soviet Union into aggressively mining the mineral in mountainous areas, with no regard for potential damage to health and the ecology. About 10,000 mt of uranium ore was extracted at the Mayluu-Suu mine and processed at two local refineries between 1946 and 1968.