TASHKENT, Uzbekistan (Asia Water Wire) - Ageing and poorly maintained uranium mine-tailings and waste rock dumps continue to threaten several million people in Central Asia, warn ecologists.

   The radioactive tailings and waste rock dumps are located in the area of a former uranium plant built 50 years ago in the Mailuu-Suu River Valley, in the western Osh province of Kyrgyzstan. 

   The development of the uranium deposit started in the 1940s, when the former Soviet Union began to create nuclear weapons.

   The Mailuu-Suu River Valley remains under threat of earthquakes, floods and landslides. 

   The Mailuu-Suu River is a tributary of the Naryn River, which feeds the Syr Darya River flowing some 2,000 kilometres north-west through Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan to the Aral Sea. 

   There are 23 tailing and 13 waste rock dumps in the Mailuu-Suu area. The total tailings volume is about 1.96 million cubic metres, and there are some 0.8 million cubic metres of waste-rock dump.

   Anarkul Aytaliev, head of the department that monitors and handles waste dumps for the Kyrgyz Ministry of Ecology and Emergency Situations, said the construction of the dumps for tailings and waste rock does not meet the standards of safe storing of uranium wastes.

    “The drainage system has been destroyed or blocked. The protective coverings placed over the tailings do not satisfy modern requirements. There is subsidence (the process by which an area of land sinks to a lower level),” Aytaliev told Asia Water Wire. 

   “The subsidence contributes to the formation of small ponds and rainwater seepage into the tailings. Some of the tailings have been damaged by floods", he added.

   Moreover, he continued, “Essential repair works (in the area) have not been carried out during the last 15 years.”

   There is also no full clarity on the potential toxins in the tailings and dumps due to lack of detailed investigation. Monitoring of the sites has been rather limited during the past decades because of lack of resources. 

   There is enough proof that they cause pollution and expose the population to health risks.

   Because of the dilution effect of large volumes of river water, values of uranium concentrations in water, however, are usually close to drinking water standards. High levels of radioactivity have just occasionally been observed in water and sediment samples from the Mailuu-Suu River.

   More than 10 people have reportedly died and hundreds of buildings have been damaged or destroyed as a result of an increase in landslide activity, observed around Mailuu-Suu during the last 10 years. 

   The landslides, which threaten particularly the uranium dumps in the Tectonic, Koi-Tash and Izolit areas, now present a high potential for further activation and slippage down the valley slopes.

   A major landslide could seriously damage the dumps and push tailings into the Mailuu-Suu River, washing the dangerous substances through the town of Mailuu-Suu and possibly further downstream to the densely populated Ferghana Valley and the Syr Darya River basin. 

   Millions of people in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan potentially are at risk.

    The ‘Obschestvenny Reiting’ newspaper reported that about 300 thousand cubic metres of material fell in the Mailuu-Suu River near the uranium mine tailings in the spring this year. 

   The landslide caused the river to change its path but so far has not damaged the tailings, Yusufjan Shadimetov, ECOSAN International Organisation president, has been quoted as saying. ECOSAN is an environmental group headquartered in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital.

    “Some 1,000 tonnes of soil migrate toward Uzbekistan every year,” Shadimetov said. “Each tonne contains 200 grammes of radioactive material.”

    There are no warning signs or fences in the area, Aytaliev said. Many of the areas around the uranium mines are used as pastures, which contributes to migration of radionuclide contaminants to the food chain. A radionuclide is an unstable isotope of an element that decays or disintegrates spontaneously, emitting radiation.

    “Mailuu-Suu poses a real threat to the ecology of the (Central Asian) region. Low-level ionising radiation is very dangerous for the national gene pool,” a Kazakh counter-terrorism expert remarked.

   Ionizing radiation can damage genetic material (DNA) either directly by displacing electrons from the DNA molecule or indirectly by displacing electrons from some other molecule in the cell, which then interacts with the DNA. A cell can be destroyed quickly or its growth or function may be altered through a change that may not be evident for many years.

   “The tailings are also risky in view of national security protection,” he added. “They are an alluring object of terrorist ambitions.”

    The World Bank has begun a disaster hazard project for Kyrgyzstan to “minimise the exposure of humans, livestock, and riverine flora and fauna to radionuclides associated with abandoned uranium mine tailings and waste rock dumps in the Mailuu-Suu area,” the bank said in a statement. 

   The project includes “uranium mining wastes isolation and protection,” improvement to “the national system for disaster management, preparedness and response” and the establishment of real-time monitoring and warning systems, seismic stations and sensors.

    The total cost of the project is 11.76 million U.S. dollars, of which 6.9 million dollars will be provided by the bank's International Development Association, an institution that gives aid to the world's poorest countries.

   Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked country bordering China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

   The Tien Shan Mountains and associated valleys and basins encompass the entire nation. The country has a population of nearly 5.2 million, about 60 percent of which lives below the poverty line. (END/IPSAP/AWW/MK/JS/121005)