Tourists in Kyrgyzstan buy nuclear waste as souvenir
Three Chinese tourists have bought a 274-kg piece of depleted uranium and brought it home from Kyrgyzstan as a souvenir, the China Daily newspaper reported.
The three tourists bought “the glittering treasure” for $2,000 at a flea market in Kyrgyzstan, hoping to make money by reselling it in China.
Not knowing what they had actually bought, the tourists sliced off a piece of the stone and took it to experts from Beijing’s University. After identifying the souvenir as a piece of depleted uranium, the scientists called the police.
Kyrgyzstan has a number of uranium disposal sites left from Soviet-era uranium mining.
Soviet-Era Uranium Waste in Kyrgyzstan
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, May 7 – Radioactive dust, contaminated groundwater and toxic landslides and floods threaten more than a million people in Central Asia.
The radioactive threat stems from 92 toxic waste sites in Kyrgyzstan that contain waste from uranium mining during the Soviet era. The waste sites are relics of the time when the former Soviet Union mined the uranium for use in its nuclear arsenal.
The small town of Mailii-Suu, in the south of Kyrgyzstan is marred by two million cubic meters of radioactive waste buried alongside a river flowing through the Ferghana Valley, the most populated and fertile area in Central Asia.
“The USSR’s first atomic bomb was made from Maili-Suu’s uranium,” said Torgoev Isakbek Asangalievich, a scientist at Kyrgyzstan’s National Academy of Science.
Now, landslides and earthquakes threaten to wash huge quantities of uranium waste into the Ferghana Valley’s Syr Darya River. The poorly guarded sites are visited by local villagers in search of scrap.
In some areas, women and children graze livestock in contaminated areas.
In response to these issues, the Kyrgyzstan government has partnered with the UN Development Programme.
Funding for such programs is also critical, particularly in view of the global economic crisis. At the moment, the UNDP estimates roughly US$42 million is needed to rehabilitate the radioactive waste sites and minimize the regional environmental threats. Source: environment News service
Watch VIDEO about Maili-Suu URANIUM PLANT
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2 Comments to “Tourists in Kyrgyzstan buy nuclear waste as souvenir”
[...] información en toktali y RIA Novosti. La foto de la mina es de mvdboss1 Comparte: These icons link to social bookmarking [...]
[...] in both German and English. It also has a post on one of the stories I neglected to post on here: Tourists Buy Nuclear Waste as a Souvenir! As Toktali writes: Three Chinese tourists have bought a 274-kg piece of depleted uranium and [...]