A Russian expedition will go to an arctic island long used for Soviet nuclear testing and dumping to investigate whether radioactive contamination has occurred in the region, according to plans announced Friday.
Scientists want to find out the effects of years of rampant nuclear dumping off the coast of Novaya Zemlya, a large Russian island north of the Arctic Circle where the Soviet Union conducted nuclear tests and which seems to have been used as something of a nuclear garbage dump.The probe was ordered by the government of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, according to the Soviet news agency Tass, which said the "special expedition is to study the degree of radioactive contamination off the arctic island of Novaya Zemlya in an area turned into a dump for radioactive waste products."
"The Kara Sea area off Novaya Zemlya's northern coast holds radioactive waste from atomic-powered ships and one reactor from the world's first atomic icebreaker, Lenin, dumped here by decision of the Soviet government in 1967," Tass said.
Over the years, Novaya Zemlya also has been used for nuclear weapons testing - underwater, underground and in the atmosphere.
The island is northeast of Scandinavia, north of the Russian mainland and separates the arctic waters of the Barents Sea from the Kara Sea.
Earlier this week, Yeltsin ordered a halt to all Novaya Zemlya nuclear testing as part of a one-year moratorium on nuclear tests in Russia.
Novaya Zemlya has been the focus of increased attention as more information comes to light about previously undisclosed Soviet nuclear activities around the island.
European environmentalists have wanted an investigation of Novaya Zemlya and some even sought to do it themselves but have been forbidden.
There have been 132 nuclear explosions at Novaya Zemlya, the last one a year ago, and some 11,000 nuclear containers dumped there, according to an article in Iz-vestiya this week.
"All this was, naturally, done in secret," Izvestiya said, but local environmental groups, local government officials and local investigative reporters have helped to unearth the information and pressure for something to be done.
Glasnost has helped bring the super-secret nuclear activities into the open and now there is even a map showing the northern Novaya Zemlya bays and gulfs where nuclear waste has been dumped and in the Kara Sea where Izvestiya said Murmansk Shipping Co. "vessels have been throwing off nuclear waste for two decades."
For years, officials denied that arctic waters were used for nuclear disposal, Izvestiya said, expressing concerns that no special precautions were taken to prevent radioactive leaks and that containers may have corroded.