9 December 2004
Former nuclear facility in Brest is said to be safe after removal of contaminated earth
Experts say that a former nuclear facility in Brest is safe enough and can be used for any purposes after contractors have completely removed radioactive earth from it.
The facility, named Zapadny, served as a transshipping station for natural uranium on its way from the former East Germany to the Soviet Union for enrichment, Ivan Luzhinsky, a departmental chief with the Brest Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology, told BelaPAN.
The facility was actively used in the 1950s and 1960s to reload uranium from standard European into Russian railcars that had a wider gage. Some of the ore spilt on the ground in the process and was pressed down by heavy machinery, forming a 1.5-meter layer. In an effort to decontaminate the site, contractors removed a total of 7,000 cubic meters of contaminated earth, bringing it to a burial ground some 3.5 kilometers away from the village of Struga near the town of Malorita.
More than one billion rubels was provided out of the central and regional budgets for the project. Some 20,000 cubic meters of contaminated earth was removed from another facility, code named 802, in Brest and buried in the storage site earlier this year. The hazardous soil was scattered on clay and covered with another layer of clay and a layer of clean earth. Authorities say that the burial ground will pose no threat to local residents' health. The site is expected to be constantly examined by experts.
http://brestonline.com/en/news/news555.html