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MOSCOW – Witnesses say the leak of three hundred tonnes of radioactive sludge at Lithuania’s closed-down Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) last October 5 – the accident occurred during decommissioning works at this site, which used to operate Chernobyl-type RBMK reactors – led to radiation exposure suffered by cleanup personnel and severe contamination of the premises. Did management try to downplay the accident? And are accidents like this possible at RBMK-running NPPs in Russia?
Rimasauskaite further confirmed the official version that the leak does not pose any threat to the plant’s employees or the environment in a telephone conversation with Bellona. She also said all the 300 tonnes of the leaked radioactive decontamination solution was absorbed by the drainage system. She denied, however, that the event could be considered an accident and said it was a non-significant, below-the-scale event.
A Russian-language publication in Lithuania called Litovsky Kurier (The Lithuanian Courier) initiated an investigation into the incident (in Russian), concluding that the event had to be regarded as an accident and suggesting that assurances coming from Ignalina’s press service “may not fully correspond to reality:”
Around three hundred cubic metres of thick flushing material – a highly radioactively contaminated suspension containing nitric acid and potassium permanganate – leaked through the rupture into the technological area of Reactor Unit 1,” the story said.
“But this thick radioactive mass did not escape into the technological drain holes, as affirmed in the statement prepared by Ms. Rimasauskaite ,” the article continued. “According to unconfirmed information, this was the reason why a large number of plant employees were engaged in cleanup works after the accident. People were manually collecting the leaked radioactive suspension, which they were then removing from the technological area and ‘burying’ on site.” “There is no doubt,” the story said, “that working with contaminated material led to these people’s exposure to radiation. But they are forced to take such risks out of fear of losing their jobs.” That conclusion was supported in statements posted on a website hosting a forum for Visaginas-based nuclear workers, as well as on the website of the publication Delfi.Lt, which also provides a public discussion forum. These are just a few samples: “Talk to the people who were cleaning up this solution. These were people working the first shift; covering that shift [for a colleague] was shift manager Lutkov, who I respect a lot; he, being a true hero, was the first one to enter the area with dispersed acidic [decontamination] solution. And I can’t but feel sorry for the millions of public money [lost], for the guys who were cleaning up this crap…because that dirt from the circuit, just beta radiation alone in it makes for up to two million [particles per square centimetre per second]. If my memory serves me right, a towel that we use to dry our hands with can have no more than 10 particles – just compare the scale of contamination.” “Three hundred cubic metres (SIX railway tank cars!) of radioactively contaminated nitric acid with potassium permanganate getting smeared all over – other than that, it’s all great. Everything’s just dandy!”
It is certainly disconcerting to read in a 2009 report issued by the Russian industrial oversight agency, the Federal Service for Ecological, Technological, and Atomic Supervision (Rostekhnadzor), that there are problems with assessing the integrity and durability of pipelines at Russian NPPs, or that not all of them are in fact under due control:
“As regards the weld seams in the […] austenitic pipelines of RMBK-1000 reactors, the issue of reliability of maintenance control must be differentiated depending on the method of maintenance control and location of the weld seams (some of them are not subject to control). On the whole, the reliability of defect monitoring, as dependent on the method of maintenance control, can be assessed to range between 64% and 90%, which also attests to the urgency of the problem of substantiating assessments of integrity and strength of […] welded austenitic pipelines.”
In plainer language, the danger is there that the pipelines in use at the RBMK-running NPPs in Russia may burst at any given moment. Whether this is as big a threat as another Chernobyl depends on many factors, but one should certainly not dismiss the risks.
The condition of Mayak’s equipment Research conducted by Bellona Web reveals, the last incident at the RT-1 reprocessing facility at Mayak occurred in June 2007. A pipeline carrying pulps of radioactive mixtures in the facility’s No. 5 workshop sprung a leak between June 24th and 26th. The severe leak, according to many interviewed by Bellona Web, cost Mayak’s former director, Vitaly Sadovnikov, his post. In October of 2007, a leak occurred in the industrial complex of Mayak during a routine transport of liquid radioactive waste over one of the plant’s internal roadways while being transferred from Mayak’s chemical-metallurgical facility to its radio-chemical plant. But Rosatom’s Konyshev said that the recent string of incidents “does not have anything to do with equipment deterioration at Mayak.” “Routine equipment substitutions occur at Mayak. One can’t speak of any equipment (there) being worn out beyond the norm,” he said. Mayak was the Soviet Union’s most important production point for weapons grade plutonium. Since 1977, Mayak has been used for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel at its RT-1 facility. RT-1 is built to handle spent nuclear fuel from VVER-450, BN-450 and BN-600 reactors, as well as fuel from submarine and nuclear icebreaker reactors. In recent years, RT-1 has been undergoing upgrades in order to reprocess fuel form VVER-1000 reactors – per Rosatom’s plans - which are the workhorse of Russia’s nuclear industry. Mayak reprocesses some 120 tons of spent nuclear fuel a year, though its annual throughput is designed to be 400 tons. In February 2006, the State Duma’s Committee on Ecology demanded that reprocessing at Mayak be brought down to the minimum that was “sufficient to fulfill international agreements, as well as programmes of geared toward ecological and defence purposes” – meaning the continued reprocessing of fuel from nuclear submarines.
1990 June Kapl, New York, USA - A parking lot at Knolls Atomic Power Lab (KAPL) in New York is contaminated with radioactive waste, yet workers have been permitted to work there, even though AEC and the US Dept of Energy knew the radioactivity was far above Federal and State limits and may pose a health hazard. ("Schenectady Gazette" (US) 22/1/88, WISE p.4 NC 303, 9/12/88)
June 29, 2005 WASHINGTON (AP) The Associated Press reports -- The preponderance of scientific evidence shows that even very low doses of radiation pose a risk of cancer or other health problems and there is no threshold below which exposure can be viewed as harmless, a panel of prominent scientists concluded Wednesday.