Troops set to work decontaminating ‘Siberian Chernobyl’ amid fears of ecological catastrophe
Radiation, chemical and biological forces tackle two million tonnes of toxic chemical waste with huge mercury stockpile and oil poisons.
'Frankly, nobody has ever done anything about them.' Picture: Ministry of Defence
Concern over the abandoned Usolyekhimprom plant in Usolye-Sibirskoye, Irkutsk region has been rising for a long time.
This week on an order by Russian president Vladimir Putin specialist forces as well as experts from Rosatom and other government agencies have set to work cleaning up the site of one of the USSR’s largest chemical plants.
Footage shows the decontamination operation getting underway by taking samples of the poisons - not all of them known - threatening the nearby Angara River which flows out of Baikal, the world’s deepest lake.
'A large chemical factory was functioning there, and now, the waste storage facilities of that chemical factory are in a critical condition.' Pictures: Usolye City Newspaper, Usolie City
The problem was highlighted by The Siberian Times last year when Svetlana Radionova, head of state environmental watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, warned of a ‘toxic disaster’ and ‘ecological Chernobyl’, comparing the potential damage to the 1986 nuclear explosion in Soviet Ukraine.
Putin recently said: 'It is obvious to everyone concerned that the burden of environmental problems has been accumulating for a long time, going back to the 1930s.
'A large chemical factory was functioning there, and now, the waste storage facilities of that chemical factory are in a critical condition.
'Frankly, nobody has ever done anything about them.
'Moreover, instead of settling the problem, it was actually glossed over.’
Footage shows the decontamination operation getting underway by taking samples of the poisons.
The most urgent task is dealing with poisoning from a decaying mercury electrolysis facility.
The concentration of mercury in drainage waters at the crumbling plant is more than 33,000 times acceptable levels, according to defence ministry sources.
Mercury in the air is 367 times above permitted quantities, with the closest residents living just 2km from the site.
Some 1,200 tonnes of mercury was stored here.
The most urgent task is dealing with poisoning from a decaying mercury electrolysis facility. Pictures: Ministry of Defence, Usolie City
Pollution is also caused by oil products, iron, copper, phosphates, lead, zinc and copper at the plant which closed in 2005.
The exact chemical cocktails in dozens of underground reservoirs is not known.
Soil and groundwater are ‘saturated with toxins’.
Some 400 former industrial facilities are polluted by two million tonnes of chemical waste on an area covering 16 square kilometres.
‘All production facilities, including soil and subsurface water, have been saturated with hazardous chemicals,’ said Irkutsk region governor Igor Kobzev.
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This plant chemical works to make poisonous gases and handled bodies from the Retchlag (uranium mines gulags with extermination by forced work), cut in pieces in side areas of the plant and the most uranium-loaded parts plutogenized in these long boxes hung under fires, primitive neutron accelerators ; this next to the chemical works for e.g. sarin... (as you need armour piercing and then a chemical load). The fire that destroyed it left relatively few environmental traces in the north-western fallout area around the Angara river as the uranium was well concentrated, very efficiently plutogenized, & the chemical weapons programme occupied most of the plant. It's to me 100% clear that Mao Zedong opposed that and is the orderer of two shots of artillery against it that set it ablaze... 1969 China-USSR war.
danke!