Radioactive Village to be Evacuated -- Someday

After radioactive wastes were discharged into the Techa River near the Mayak nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the mid-1950s, all the surrounding villages were cleared, except Muslimova. Its 4,000 inhabitants stayed on, their appeals for resettlement ignored.

The population has been subject to compulsory testing of blood and bone marrow since 1950, but the results were kept secret until 1992. When finally made public, the analyses indicated increased levels of various radiation-induced diseases and ailments.

However, following several days of demonstrations this month, the Chelyabinsk county administration which runs the district signed a decree for resettlement of the village of Muslimova and adjacent areas along the Techa river

The villagers, plus another 4,000 living in three more large settlements along the affected 150 kilometer stretch of the river, will be evacuated when funds for their transfer are available.

All Russia is stricken by a funds crisis that has starved the nation's authorities of money to pay salaries and maintain even basic services. Thus the new decree, passed in early August, does not set any time limits or allocate any funds for the operation.

"Nevertheless, we still see it as a significant victory," says a spokesman for the local ecological protest group Techa.

"The decree will be of huge symbolic value for the environmental groups of Chelyabinsk. After more than seven years of fighting, we have gained a solid lever to demand that the county administration should now fulfil its obligations."

Located just 30 kilometers downstream from the Mayak Chemical Combine, Muslimova overlooks a stretch of river that feeds a 1,000 kilometer long river system. It eventually flows into the Arctic Ocean, via the Iset, Tobol, and Irtysh rivers, where radioactivity from the plant has also been detected.

The uncontrolled dumping of high-level radioactive waste into the Techa River occurred between 1949 and 1956. Up to 1952, waste measuring about three million Curies (Ci) of radioactivity had been dumped into the river, six kilometers below its source. (The 1986 Chernobyl disaster released about one billion Ci of radiation.)

The dumping was reduced in 1952 after a survey had shown extensive contamination of the flood plain and river bed and excessive exposure to the inhabitants of settlements along the river. Most of the radioactivity accumulated in the bottom sediment sand of the river and plants, causing secondary contamination.

In the 1960s, a series of reservoirs were built to try to prevent the spread of radioactivity. However, the Asanovski marshes, just below the last reservoir, contain over 6,000 Ci of radioactivity which still seeps into the river.

In 1949 there were over 28,000 people living in 38 settlements along the river in the Chelyabinsk and Kurgan districts. Some 7,500 people from 22 settlements were evacuated between 1953 and 1960 and another 4,950 in 1961. Some 8,000 hectares of land was withdrawn from use, although the restrictions have largely been ignored.

In the Kurgan region further downstream there are 15 more settlements with a total population of 14,000 people.

At 11 of the evacuated settlements along the river Techa the effective equivalent dose is still more than 100 milliSieverts (mSv).

The maximum permitted limit for workers in the nuclear industry in Britain is 50 mSv a year. In terms of lifetime affective doses, a Muslimova villager can expect to receive 280 mSv.

Children receive an effective equivalent dose of more than five mSv a year, well over the normal background dose (one to two mSv a year). But when in 1990 experts ruled part of the village unsafe, residents were simply instructed to move to another part of the settlement.

Although concentrations of the radioactive isotopes strontium 90 and cesium 137 in the river near the settlement have decreased, the content of cesium 137 in the river silt by the village has still been measured at between 300 and 500 nanoCuries a kilogram, thereby qualifying it as solid radioactive waste.

Hopes are high for an early resolution of the villagers demands, but if history is to be the guide, there is little reason for confidence. This is not the first bid to move the villagers. In 1994, the administration of Chelyabinsk county passed a resolution to evacuate those Muslimova inhabitants who had suffered the most, and to build a new village further from the Techa river.

But nothing was ever done about it.