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- <text>
- <title>
- Documents Reveal Nuclear Waste Dumping
- </title>
- <article>
- <hdr>
- Foreign Broadcast Information Service, November 4, 1991
- Documents Reveal Nuclear Waste Dumping
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>[Video report by correspondent V. Anuchin, including comments by
- USSR's people's deputy A.A. Zolotkov--from the "TV Inform"
- newscast. Moscow Central Television Vostok Program and Orbita
- Networks in Russian 1630 GMT 3 Nov 91]
- </p>
- <p> [Text] These documents--or, to be more precise, the
- correspondence marked with the "top secret" seal--were given
- to us by the Murmansk Oblast KGB Directorate. They are dated 13
- July 1990 and 8 February 1991 and were sent to Mikhail
- Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the country's president, and Kryuchkov,
- the former chairman of the USSR KGB. I will read several
- excerpts from this correspondence:
- </p>
- <p> An intolerable situation has come about in organizing and
- carrying out the reloading of nuclear reactors, as well as in
- collecting and storing nuclear waste, in the Northern Fleet.
- Thousands of tons of such waste have piled up. Some of it was
- dumped in the Barents and Kara Seas in the Novaya Zemlya
- region. Affected by the sea environment, the sunken containers
- disintegrated, posing real danger to the fishing areas, sea
- creatures, navigation, and to the residents of the Kola
- Peninsula, of course, as well as to the residents of
- Arkhangelsk Oblast. The sinking of the containers was carried
- out in shallow seas. In some instances, when they failed to
- sink, they were shot at. Sometimes, these containers were washed
- up on the coast where they were smashed against the rocks by the
- sea waves.
- </p>
- <p> The country's president instructed the former Council of
- Ministers and the Ministry of Defense to take urgent measures.
- But there was no reaction to this. There was no reply to the
- second letter, which was addressed to the former chairman of
- the USSR KGB.
- </p>
- <p> Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin has announced a moratorium on
- nuclear tests in the Novaya Zemlya region. But the problems are
- still here.
- </p>
- <p> [Zolotkov] We must treat this problem seriously and start to
- set up a single site where the waste from both the Navy and the
- merchant fleet is to be dumped. Moreover, this site should
- belong to no particular department, because all these places
- [points to areas on a map] result from the activities of a
- certain department. The site should be open for inspection by
- both international experts and the public.
- </p>
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-