Press Release

27/11/97

Pioneering Norwegian-Russian environmental cooperation

The Norwegian Ministry of Environment today releases a new report from the first phase of a collaborative study by a Norwegian-Russian expert group on radioactive pollution associated with the complex of nuclear industrial installations known as the Mayak Production Association ("Mayak PA") in the southern Urals. This is the first time such comprehensive official documentation has been collected on conditions, past and present, at and around the Mayak site.

The report surveys the extent of pollution after the release of radioactive materials to rivers, lakes and atmosphere, and describes the consequences of a serious accidental explosion in 1957 and the spread of contaminated dust in 1967.

Mayak is probably the most radioactively contaminated area in the world. The first nuclear plant, the first of its kind in the former Soviet Union, started at the site in 1948 producing plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. The last reactor producing plutonium-239 was shut down in 1990. Today, operations at Mayak are dedicated to reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and producing radioisotopes and equipment for industrial and medical analysis.

Scientists from the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, the Agricultural University of Norway and the Institute for Energy Technology have cooperated with their Russian colleagues, carrying out joint field studies in which hundreds of samples of sediment, soil, water, vegetation and fish have been collected and analysed concurrently by laboratories in Russia and Norway. The fieldwork has yielded valuable knowledge of activity levels and potential future pollution from the Mayak region, while making possible comparisons of more recent measurement data with official Russian information on previous emissions and activity levels.

The next phase of the project, which is already under way, concerns scenarios involving the release of radioactive materials: in particular, the consequences of potential accidents, and the implications of radioactive substances transported through the rivers to the Kara Sea, for the Arctic populations.

The Russian minister for atomic energy, V. Mikhailov, and the former Norwegian minister of environment, Thorbj›rn Berntsen, note in their forewords to the report that cooperation between the Russian and Norwegian scientists has taken place in an atmosphere of mutual respect and openness.

"The results of the Mayak project are both competent and complete", says the Russian minister. "There is no doubt that future joint Russian-Norwegian collaboration will produce new and valuable results and provide an expansion of ecological security."

"Norwegian-Russian cooperation has reached a milestone", Secretary of State Jesper Simonsen says. "The Mayak project is of great significance in its detailing of the threats to our northern maritime regions."

Contact:

Magne H. Røed, Ministry of Environment, tel. +47 22 24 59 97

Per Strand, Radiation Protection Authority, +47 67 16 25 64

Ingar Amundsen, Radiation Protection Authority +47 67 16 25 39