Time to rise

Are there forty radioactive generators in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk?

Representatives of public organizations of the Sakhalin Region sent an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev, in which they asked to instruct the administration of the head of state "to monitor the progress of search work to detect, ...

Representatives of public organizations of the Sakhalin Region sent an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev, in which they asked to instruct the administration of the head of state "to control the progress of search work to detect, raise and dispose of radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, scheduled for August-September this year."

The problem itself is over twenty years old. In 1987, the Sakhalin air detachment, fulfilling an order from the Hydrographic Service of the Pacific Fleet to transport an RTG from one lighthouse to another, during an unsuccessful maneuver, dropped a dangerous cargo into the sea near Cape Nizky. Almost immediately, a special commission was set up in Moscow, and an expedition was sent to the Far East, which did not find either an RTG or traces of radioactive radiation. It was concluded that it had sunk deep into the silt, and since the deadly filling was inside a stainless steel box, there was no need to worry about losing it. Just in case, an area of ​​25 square kilometers was closed to all types of economic activity.

Exactly ten years later, in 1997, history repeated itself. Now an emergency release of dangerous cargo in the area of ​​​​Cape Maria was carried out by an air squadron from Nikolaevsk-on-Amur.

Military experts are still unreasonably calm, referring to the absence of an increased radioactive background in the Far Eastern waters and to the insoluble shell of strontium-90. But civilian experts say: in the area of ​​​​the discharge, it may not be phony, but because of the circular current, radioisotope contamination can appear on any coast of Kolyma, Kamchatka and Sakhalin. As for the stainless shell, its thickness is only 5 mm, and in twenty years in an aggressive salty environment it could collapse.

And the worst thing is that the military admits the dumping of only two RTGs, while about forty of them were flooded in the Far East, says Vyacheslav Fedorchenko, an electronics engineer who has been working for military departments for many years, and for the last twenty years has been involved in the ecology of the Far Eastern water area:

— I have unique pictures taken from space. A special computer program showed that they were RITEGs. All of them are flooded near the lighthouses, where they once worked out their resource, - says Fedorchenko. - There are several dozens of such sites prohibited for any economic activity in the sailing directions of the Main Directorate of Cartography and Navigation of the Ministry of Defense of Russia. Moreover, their appearance coincided with the time when RTGs began to be used at lighthouses. The military carried out the flooding in secret, drawing up documents only for internal use, although they are required by law to report every burial.

Things got off the ground only three years ago, when the forces of the expedition of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Pacific Fleet lifted the first RTG, which had been accidentally flooded in 2007, from the bottom of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. But other flooded generators remained. Fishing continues in flood zones, and the statistics of oncological diseases among Sakhalin residents is growing. The average number of cancer cases in Russia is 341 cases per one hundred thousand people, and in Sakhalin it reaches five hundred. Doctors do not directly connect these figures with the possibility of radioactive radiation, but they do not rule it out either.

Help "New"

RITEG is 500 kg of uranium-238 and 36 kg of fuel mixture based on strontium-90, packed in a metal box measuring 1.5 by 1.5 meters. The generator belongs to the first class of danger. The danger of radioisotope contamination persists in any environment for 600-800 years.