 File image: Kola Peninsula. |
Murmansk, Russia (AFP) Oct 17, 2010 An electronic sign along a busy street posts the outside temperature, the wind strength -- and the radioactivity level. Welcome to Russia's Kola Peninsula, a region that still bears the scars of its dubious past as the Soviet Union's "nuclear dump".
When the USSR imploded, the northwestern Russian peninsula was left with ageing nuclear submarines and spent nuclear fuel abandoned in not always airtight containers.
The Soviet breakdown posed a significant threat to the nearby fish-filled Barents Sea, as well as flourishing opportunities for traffickers of nuclear materials.
Two decades and just as many billion dollars later, the "dump" looks a bit less shabby, thanks to funds supplied mostly by the West.
"What is positive, or should I say, least negative, is that the situation is under control when it comes to nuclear safety," said Sergei Zhavoronkin of the region's public council for the safe use of nuclear energy.
"It has not always been the case."
A common practice until the mid-1980s, dumping radioactive waste into the sea is a thing of the past, and the 100 or so submarines once rusting around the peninsula have now almost all been disposed of.
The coastline's lighthouses -- isolated, unoccupied and therefore vulnerable to theft -- have gone from using radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which run on radioactive decay and are widely considered unsafe, to solar power.
"The situation has changed for the better, but from our point of view, there are still problems," said former submarine officer Aleksander Nikitin.
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