Fire at radioactive waste storage
A fire at a shipyard on the Kola Peninsula involved in scrapping of radioactive waste might have led to increased levels of radiation. The accident occurred last Friday. Norway was not informed.
The fire broke out on August 27 at shipyard no 10 in Aleksandrovsk, formerly known as Polyarny, and it took two hours to locate where the fire had started, newspaper Novaya Gazeta reports. Nobody was hurt in fire, which ruined a terminal between the shops for sorting and scrapping of radioactive containers.
Shipyard no 10 belongs to the Ministry of Defense. The plant is involved in an international program for sorting and scrapping of nuclear waste, and is the only company in Northern Russian to do such work.
The radiation level at the fire scene reached 40 micro roentgen per hour, approximately three times the normal background level in the area. The radiation level in Aleksandrovsk town stayed normal during the incident.
- There are reasons to be worried when such fires and leakages occur, says Nils Bøhmer, a nuclear physicist with the Bellona Foundation in Oslo. Mr. Bøhmer has been working with questions related to nuclear safety in northwest Russia over the last 20 years.
A team of investigators from the Ministry of Defense, the Northern Fleet, Rosatom and the regional public prosecutions department is working at the scene, the newspaper reports. No journalists or activists are given access to the territory.
Naval yard No. 10 in Aleksandrovsk is infamous for its bad safety records. In late May, a partly decommissioned transport vessel for spent nuclear fuel sank at quay. The information did first come to public knowledge a week later, when a local blogger in Murmansk posted a photo of the sunken vessel.
In 2002, a retired nuclear powered submarine of the Echo-II class tipped over while inside a floating dry-dock at the yard. No leakage was then detected.
Simultaneously as the fire and radiation leakage is made public today, the Norwegian-Russian commission on nuclear safety has its annual meeting in Murmansk. Exchange of information when an incident occurs has always been requested by Norwegian radiation authorities. Norway and Russia has an agreement about exchange of information, but in practice Russian authorities interpret this agreement to cover only incidents where there are releases of radioactivity that can cross into another country’s territory.
When BarentsObserver Wednesday morning contacted the Norwegian Radiation Control Authorities (NRPA) it was the first time they have heard about last week’s fire and radiation leakages. The shipyard in Aleksandrovsk is located some 120 km from the border to Norway.
In 2004, a treatment facility for solid radioactive waste was commissioned at the naval yard as a part of the Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation (AMEC), partly financed by Norway. At that time, it was said that 600 cubic meter of solid radioactive waste was stored at naval yard No. 10.
Read more articles on nuclear safety in this special BarentsObserver section.
