MAILUU-SUU, Kyrgyzstan (Asia Water Wire) – The Kyrgyz government has begun rehabilitating five warehouses storing radioactive waste – a potential hazard that threatens almost all of Central Asia.

   The project to reinforce and rehabilitate the storehouses at Mailuu-Suu began in April and is expected to be completed within two years. The World Bank has given 11 million U.S. dollars to finance the operation.

   Radioactive scrap from Soviet-era uranium mines – and former Eastern European bloc nations – are stored in 23 storages near Mailuu-Suu City in Jalal-Abad province in southern Kyrgyzstan.

   All the storages near Mailuu-Suu are said to contain 1.37 million cubic metres of radioactive waste including 7,000 tons in semi-liquid form. The radiation level ranges from 100 to 1,800 mR/hr (micro Roentgen per hour).

   Experts say the nuclear refuse threatens the entire region because many are located near rivers. The ones in Mailuu-Suu City are near the Mailuu-Suu River a tributary of the Syr Darya.

   They fear a strong earthquake or a landslide could cause the content of any one of the storages to spill into the river and trigger a nuclear catastrophe.

   Syr Darya flows 2,000 kilometres across Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan before emptying into the Aral Sea.

   The reinforcement and rehabilitation work is now focused on a slope that could crash into the river along with the warehouses if there is a major tremor in the region. This would involve excavating and moving 30,000 cubic meters of soil and rock.

   Engineers of NarynGES, the company involved in the excavations, say the slope stabilization would be complete within six months after which they plan to move the bulldozers to tackle two warehouses.

   Warehouses number 2 and 3 are lying close to the bank of the Aylampa-Say river, a tributary of the Mailuu-Suu.

   In all, five of the 23 warehouses near Mailuu-Suu City lie dangerously close to the river and could be submerged during high waters in the spring.

   The plan is to build embankments to reinforce the riverbank and to construct a new road to the city to avoid the existing one that is threatened by landslides.

   The engineers would also have to drill holes on unstable rock faces, place sensors to monitor seismic activity and build drainage systems to tap surface and subsoil waters.

   Payzulla Kejebaev, the Head of Jalal-Abad province department of the Ministry of Extreme Situations (MES), says the government plans to closely monitor the weak slopes – especially the Koy-Tash landslip – after the new road connecting Sary-Bee and Mailuu-Suu city is completed.

   "We have been unable to monitor the landslip now but every year experts from Uzbekistan come and check its conditions,” said Kejebaev.

   The local residents call the landslip the Black Dragon – perhaps a reference to its potential to destroy.

   Waste from storages that cannot be rehabilitated would have to be moved to safer locations for which Russian and German expertise is to be brought in for assessing the implications.

   Kyrgyzstan has set up a new Control Centre of Crisis Situations (CCCS) under the Ministry of Emergency Situations to share information for tackling regional problems.

   “Our efforts are aimed at the safety of the Central Asian states and for resolving questions of cross-border emergencies,” says Janysh Rustenbekov, MES minister of Kyrgyzstan.

   The projects now underway are to be completed in 2009 but the MES says it would need more funds – a total of 30 million U.S. dollars – for rehabilitating all radioactive waste storages in Kyrgyzstan.
(END/AWW/IPSAP/EK/BB/180506)