Kyrgyzstan's Uranium Mining Tragedy
One of the more disquieting aspects of nuclear power generation that proponents prefer not to discuss is the dirty nature of the process, from mining tailings to disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The problem is particularly acute in the former Soviet Union, where a crash nuclear program to counter the U.S. post-WW2 nuclear monopoly saw the landscape plundered and despoiled in a search for uranium ore. The debris generated by this exploitation remains a toxic threat to the present day, with little money available for cleanup.
Central Asia was the biggest supplier of uranium to the former Soviet Union. Central Asia now has a dolorous nuclear legacy from the Soviet epoch. Following the 1991 collapse of the USSR the UN estimated that more than 800 million tons of radioactive and toxic waste were left in uranium tailings dumps in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, a byproduct of the Cold War arms race. Scattered throughout the region were uranium mills that used chemicals to extract uranium to produce yellowcake powder for processing into fuel. The byproducts were "mill tailings," a sandy waste ore residue containing radioactive decay products from uranium, primarily U-238, radium and heavy metals.
The problem is not limited to the sites themselves; in Kyrgyzstan the Mailuu-Suu region inherited 23 distinct tailings deposits from Soviet-Era uranium mining operations. The USSR's first atomic bomb was made from Mailuu-Suu's uranium. Mailuu-Suu, located in the narrow landslide-prone valley of the Mailuu-Suu River, is about 15 miles from the Uzbek border. From 1946 to 1968 the former Soviet era Mailuu-Suu uranium plant produced and processed more than 10,000 metric tons of uranium ore, leaving behind 1.96 million cubic meters of tailings and .8 million cubic meters of waste rock.
The Mailuu-Suu River is a tributary to the Syr-Darya, the Fergana Valley's main source of irrigation water. The Fergana Valley is one of the most densely populated areas in Central Asia; home to 10 million people, it is a key agricultural region and major population center spanning Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. A large-scale release of the radioactive tailings resulting from landslides could lead to irreversible contamination first of the Mailuu-Suu River and subsequently the Syr Darya and downstream areas.
While the trans boundary nature of the Mailuu-Suu tailings issue presents an opportunity for collaboration among the post-Soviet Central Asian states, relatively little has been done up to now.
The debris is already having an effect on the health of the local populace; a 1999 study conducted by Kyrgyzstan's Institute of Oncology and Radiology showed that twice as many Mailuu-Suu residents suffered from some form of cancer than in the rest of the country.
In 2002 a landslide in Mailuu-Suu oblast partially blocked the Mailuu-Suu River, causing it to alter its course and run through radioactive areas, exposing highly dangerous parts of the dumps which the water washed through. Emergency measures were taken and the exposed radioactive areas were covered with thick concrete to make them safe.
In June 2004 the World Bank announced that it was funding a $6.9 million project to minimize the exposure of people and livestock to radiation, concentrating on Kyrgyzstan's southern rural mountainous areas, including the Mailuu-Suu uranium ore mining and milling area in Jalal-Abad oblast. The World Bank project was designed to isolate and protect abandoned uranium mine tailings and waste dumps from landslides, floods, and from leaching and dispersal processes associated with groundwater and surface water drainage. The project created an administrative disaster management and response system and developed to detect and warn against landslides.
Ecology and Emergency Situations Minister Temirbek Akmataliev said, "The Ministry of Ecology and Emergency Situations is pleased that a large portion of the grant funds will be used for civil works aimed at isolation and protection of abandoned uranium mine tailings and waste rock dumps in the Mailuu- Suu area from landslides and floods." Project task team leader Joop Stoutjesdijk remarked, "The project combines a mix of short and long term physical interventions as well as a number of institutional development activities. It is indeed important that early measures are taken to improve the situation in Mailuu-Suu and ensure the population that the government is committed to improve the precarious situation with mine tailings. It is equally important that a start is made with warning populations against landslides that kill people every year."
A test of the nascent system was not long in coming. After an earthquake in 2005 about 300,000 cubic meters of material fell into the Mailuu-Suu River.
Kyrgyzstan remains determined to procure if possible substantial international assistance in coping with its nuclear legacy, finding a useful venue to raise the topic at the United Nations' Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, which opened at the UN on April 27 and runs to May 22. The Kyrgyz delegation at the NPT review conference has requested that the NPT member states consider the environmental consequences of uranium mining and informed delegates that Central Asian states contain many radioactive waste sites, which pose a serious threat to the environment and water resources, ending with a call to the conference participants to assist in solving the problem of uranium tailings.
It is not the first time that Central Asian nations have raised the toxic Soviet nuclear legacy issue at the UN. On June 30, 2009 Central Asian governments launched an appeal, backed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), to governments and businesses worldwide to assist in cleaning up the toxic Cold War era nuclear waste that threatening the local population's health and contaminating ground water. Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Tajik and Uzbek officials agreed to collaborate in cleaning up the radioactive waste. Kyrgyz Prime Minister Igor Chudinov informed the UNDP that the four countries signed a declaration to set up common programs to deal with the problem of regional radioactive and toxic waste.
The World Bank funding was a modest start, but experts say that cleaning up the Mailuu-Suu uranium tailing dumps would in reality cost hundreds of millions of dollars, money that Kyrgyzstan does not have and international financial institutions and foreign countries up to now are unwilling to commit.
But if the global community is loath to part with substantial funding, it can at least share expertise. In 1978 the U.S. Congress passed the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act (UMTRCA), tasking the Department of Energy (DOE) with the responsibility of stabilizing, disposing, and controlling uranium mill tailings and other contaminated material at uranium mill processing sites spread across 10 states and at approximately 5,200 associated properties. Under UMTRCA, the DOE created the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project to decommission 24 uranium mills and dispose of their residual mill tailings.
During the period 1978-1999, UMTRA spent $1.4 billion tidying up the U.S. landscape from radioactive tailing debris. If the U.S. government is unwilling to influence the international financial institutions its dominates, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to advance similar sums to clean up Central Asia's nuclear legacy, then at the very least it can dispatch a couple of planeloads of UMTRAQ specialists to deal with the consequences of the Cold War nuclear arms race.
In the meantime, the clock is ticking in Mailuu-Suu, as heavy metals and radionuclides from the nearby tailing dumps have migrated into the town's crumbling water system, leading to immune system disorders being found in nearly one in five adolescents. A project to install water filters in schools and kindergartens is underway, but short of money, even though water samples from schools where filters were installed showed uranium content 48-65 percent lower than before, while blood tests taken from adolescents 40 days after the installation of the water filters have also shown marked improvement.
If nothing is done, then a number of Kyrgyz children seem slated to become future invisible victims of the Cold War, even though the hostilities ended 24 years ago.
http://www.silkroadreporters.com/2015/05/18/kyrgyzstans-uranium-mining-tragedy/