Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 7, 1993 TAG: 9304070214
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
RUSSIAN TANK OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE EXPLODES
A tank of radioactive waste exploded and burned Tuesday at a weapons plant in the Siberian city of Tomsk-7, contaminating 2,500 acres and exposing firefighters to dangerous levels of radiation, Russian officials said.A U.S. physicist, however, said the doses reportedly received by the firefighters would not make them sick and that the levels reported around the site would cause cancer only if someone stayed for several days.
The accident was one of a series reported in the former Soviet Union since a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded in 1986, spewing radiation across Europe.
It was unclear how much radiation was released, or how many people might be affected.
The Interfax news agency reported that the wind was carrying the radiation toward unpopulated areas.
Vitaly Nasonov, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Ministry, said some firefighters were exposed to dangerous levels.
Roland Finston, a health physicist at Stanford University, said that while firefighters' doses "would not cause any clinically detectable illness," the level around the plant "is quite a lot if it persists for a long time. Anyone who spent more than a couple of days in the area would be above acceptable levels and at increased risk for cancer."
The international environmental group Greenpeace said the explosion took place in a plutonium-separation factory, part of a secret nuclear-weapons complex in Tomsk-7.
Greenpeace said the explosion apparently did not involve plutonium, which is fatal if inhaled in even microscopic amounts.
It said its information came from a Russian member who had spoken with Nuclear Energy Minister Viktor Mikhailov.
Tomsk-7 is believed to be about 12 miles outside Tomsk, a city of 500,000 people about 1,700 miles east of Moscow.
No efforts to evacuate the region were reported.
During the Soviet era, secret cities were set up across Russia to work on military projects, including the nuclear-weapons program.
In 1990, the Tomsk-7 complex was blamed for contaminating the Tom River with nuclear waste. At least 38 people were hospitalized in that incident.
Authorities said the tank that exploded contained a solution of uranium waste products. The cause was under investigation.
Greenpeace said the explosion apparently was caused by a rapid increase in temperature in the tank after nitric acid was added to the uranium.
The explosion was accompanied by a fire that apparently started because the explosion short-circuited electrical systems in the plant, Greenpeace said.
The State Committee for Emergency Situations told Interfax that six mobile units of civil defense troops had set up temporary headquarters at the plant.