Group warns Russia nuclear dump unstable

Source: AP

Group warns Russia nuclear dump unstable

By DOUG MELLGREN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 54 minutes ago

OSLO, Norway - A nuclear waste dump in the Russia Arctic may be in danger of exploding because of corrosion caused by salt water in enormous storage tanks, the Norwegian environmental group Bellona warned Friday.

The three tanks are used to store spent nuclear fuel rods at Andreeva Bay, on the Kola Peninsula of northwestern Russia, just 28 miles from the Norwegian border, the Oslo-based group said in a statement.

"We discover now that we are sitting on a powder keg, with a fuse that is burning, but we don't know how long that fuse is," said Alexander Nikitin, a former Russian navy officer who is now one of Bellona's nuclear experts.

The group cited a report from Rosatom, the Russian nuclear authority, describing the danger. Bellona said the storage tanks were long believed to be dry inside, but that recent studies show corrosive salt water is inside the tanks.

more...

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070601/ap_on_re_eu/norway_russia_nuclear;_ylt=A0WTcVEJFGBGhnEBkwas0NUE

:sarcasm:

Lots more info in this article, here's a snip:
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1814646.ece

Kola "a nuclear bomb"

<snip>

A new report from Rosatom, the Russian government's highest nuclear authority, shows that there is a grave danger that the stockpile can explode. For Norway the consequences could exceed the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, and no one knows how imminent the danger is - if it is a question of years - or hours.

"In the best case a small, limited explosion in just one of the stored rods can lead to radioactive contamination in a five-kilometer (three-mile) radius. In the worst case, such a single explosion could cause the entire tank facility to explode. We have no calculations for what that could lead to," Aleksandr Nikitin of environmental group Bellona told Aftenposten.

"It will at least, at a careful estimate, hit Northern Europe. There are enormous members of radioactivity stored in these tanks," said Nils Bøhmer, nuclear physicist and head of Bellona's Russian division.

<snip>

time they have to remediate is especially worrisome.

They have had nuclear waste dumps explode in Mayak in 1957 and Tomsk in 1993.