Abstract
Something in siberia's tom river has scientists from Siberia to Washington wondering what's really going on at Seversk—a Russian nuclear site that its Soviet builders once called the “largest and greatest.”
The problem, according to a report by the Government Accountability Project (gap), is a plume of radioactive pollution in a league with contamination levels present in the Techa River, near Mayak, or in the Columbia River during the 1960s.
The report notes that levels of strontium 90 in plant life along local waterways is 10,000 picocuries per liter, many times higher than they say is safe.
But what really surprised gap scientists was the presence of phosphorus 32, which has a 14-day half life. None of the known nuclear activities at Seversk—past or present— explains the presence of phosphorus 32 in local waterways. Gap believes radioactive phosphorus is most likely coming from an undisclosed military reactor.
The dangerous radiation levels persist downstream in several rivers and waterways. Even more than three kilometers from the plant, levels are only reduced by a factor of four to six—much higher than GAP scientists expected.
Report authors Sergey Pashenko and Norm Buske on the Tom River in Russia.
A complete surprise
The radioactivity was discovered in August 2000 during a technology exchange program conducted by gap and several Russian nongovernmental organizations. The primary purpose of the exchange was to identify paths that radiological pollution takes as it travels through the environment.
The program measured radioactivity around the perimeters of four Siberian nuclear facilities, where access was possible, with analysis conducted in both Russian and U.S. laboratories. Another goal of the project was the exchange of ideas and technology between U.S. and Russian scientists.
The U.S-Russian team examined three other Siberian nuclear sites besides Seversk: Mayak, Novosibirsk's uranium concentrate plant, and Krasnoyarsk-26. Only samples taken at Seversk (formerly known as Tomsk-7), however, revealed anything unexpected.
Although Russian officials have attacked both gap's motives and its findings, the results were an “absolute surprise” for project director Tom Carpenter. “At first, we hadn't even planned on going to Tomsk, so it's not like we went looking for something. It was really a training mission with our Russian colleagues. We didn't even intend to write a report, but to be responsible we had to react to what we found,” he said.
The team had expected to find and document past contamination. For example, the long-lived strontium 90 the scientists found in the aquatic vegetation, while at alarmingly high levels requiring remediation, could be explained by leaching from pre-1990 liquid waste storage containers from Seversk's once-through plutonium production reactor. But the short-lived phosphorus 32 has no explanation.
Gap believes that the radioactive phosphorus is probably from some unidentified neutron source, either an “unusual” military reactor or an immense particle accelerator, operating in secret and “out of rational control.” Phosphorus 32's short half life means it doesn't hang around for long: Every six months its concentration is reduced by a factor of 1,000, and it is unmeasur-able after a few months. What they found was not a Cold War legacy, they decided, but modern history in the making. The only once-through reactor at Seversk, Ivan 1, which could have produced some phosphorus 32 during its operation, was closed in 1990. Even Ivan 1, however, would not have released the amount found in the region's rivers, and even during the Cold War, dumping phosphorus 32 directly into a river would have been considered unacceptable.
According to the gap report, “Radioactive Waste of Tom River,” (www.whistleblower.org/Tomsk/RiverTomtxt.htm) the abundance of short-lived radioactivity found in bluegreen algae “makes clear there must be a present day discharge of newly produced radioactivity into River Romashka,” which empties into the Tom.
“There have been follow-up visits by our Russian colleagues, and the results are similar,” Carpenter added. “We have total confidence in our findings.”
After gap scientists cross-checked their findings, they were “informally advised” by undisclosed Russian sources that the phosphorus 32 comes from irradiation of additives to the cooling water of a secret military reactor. “We had hints that something [other than disclosed activities] may be going on there,” said Carpenter, “but it's all speculation.”
The official response
The Russians claim they are running “a once-through cycle on their control rods” of their two closed-cycle reactors, said Norm Buske, the report's author and a gap scientist. But this doesn't make sense to Buske, since reactors usually do not have separate cooling systems for their control rods.
But even if it were true, he said, the amount of contaminated runoff would be a dribble. “Why would they dump this directly into the river when they could put it in 55-gallon drums and let it sit for a few months [while it cools off] ? And even if they did the insane thing and straight-piped everything from those two reactors directly into the river, it still wouldn't reach that level of contamination. They're setting new records with that stuff.”
The Tom River, 3.5 kilometers downstream of the Romashka River.
Buske said the response from Russian agencies has been “schizoid.” “They said our results were impossibly high, that we made them up based on our own commercial interests. Then they said the report was nothing new.”
Russian officials collect their own samples around the plant, but the way their monitoring is done often underplays problems. “We happened to stumble into the holes in their monitoring, and it is devastating to them. But they have to come to terms with the problem,” said Buske. “The reality is that it's a secret military operation, and now they're scurrying around and selecting samples that downplay the problem.”
A cold reception
Even though the gap scientists were invited by Russian scientists to show them how gap helps bring accountability to the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, the reception from Russian officials was less than warm. In a political environment where activists are routinely rousted and even jailed by Russia's Federal Security Service (fsb), gap personnel had to be careful.
“The fsb did confiscate some of the equipment we used,” explained Buske, and the scientists were accused of espionage in the Russian press. After the team was taken into custody in Novosibirsk, Buske decided to raise their profile. “We kept it public. I always had cameras, too, which are better than guns. And spies don't wear tie-dyed T-shirts.” He believes other activists, among them Joshua Handler, got themselves into trouble by appearing to sneak around.
Carpenter added that they also did not perform the kind of analysis that would identify the activities going on inside the facilities, since that could be considered espionage. Instead they concentrated on the environment. The team also made a point of meeting with officials, or those they could identify as officials, along the way. “The fsb did let us know that they were watching us,” he said.
“They were really just making eye contact with us,” agreed Buske, “just making sure we knew the lines. They weren't into being heavy. I actually like the fsb—it was all good fun. The danger comes when you don't know where the lines are. The nuclear establishment, both in Russia and the United States, wants to feel like they own the technology—they don't like people coming up to the line and sampling the hell out of them.”
Outlook
The environmental damage to the Tomsk region's flora and waterways is devastating. Exposure to radioactive contaminants can be a significant risk, especially when they are inhaled or ingested. The exposure of farm animals and fish can also introduce radioactivity into the food chain.
Buske said the local area is being “trashed” by the contamination emanating from the Seversk facility: “You would not want to spend your life on the River Tom.”
Seversk has long been considered a contaminated site. In 1993, a tank containing radioactive waste at the complex exploded. At the time, Russian authorities called the accident the most serious nuclear incident since Chernobyl. The event prompted the closing of three of Seversk's reactors.
“We have no idea how far the current plume goes,” said Carpenter. “What's certain is that with the publication of the gap study, Seversk risks regaining its prior fame as the world's worst radiological polluter.