18 October 2001
Operation launched to decontaminate radioactive facility in central Brest

 Authorities in Brest in southwestern Belarus have launched a long-awaited operation to decontaminate the so-called Facility 802, a former
reloading point for radioactive ore in the very center of the 300,000 city.
Up to the 1990s, Facility 802 was used to reload radioactive are coming from East Germany from European-gauge railroad cars into wider-gauge cars common in the former USSR. Throughout the 90s, any projects to
decontaminate the area kept bumping up against a lack of funds.
This summer, Belarus' Council of Ministers finally ordered 1 billion rubels in public funds to be allocated to move radioactive soil from Facility 802 to a designated burial site. A Brest-based building contractor, Brestvodstroi, won a tender to implement the project. Brestvodstroi has begun digging at the burial site. Sources tell BelaPAN no funds have actually been allocated so far, so new delays are not unlikely.