Soviet-Era Uranium Waste Sites Now Threaten Central Asia

Storage sites for uranium tailings that were built in Soviet times in Tajikistan are now leaking radiation into the surrounding atmosphere and ground water supplies, undermining the health and well-being of the people of a republic and a broader region that lack the resources to clean up a problem that it did nothing to create.

At three formerly “closed” locations in Tajikistan – Taboshar, Chkalovsk and Adrasman – Soviet state enterprises mined uranium and left enormous piles of radioactive tailings in poorly constructed containment areas. After 1991, the mines closed – in many cases, the veins were running out – but the problems remain.
There are now ten tailings preservation sites, intended to prevent the leakage of radiation and chemical poisons into the surrounding environment, but none of them is working and intended. As a result, Tajik specialists say that they constitute “a serious danger for the environment and human life not only in nearby cities and towns but in Central Asia as a whole.”

A major reason for that conclusion is that they are located near major bodies of water: the Kayrakkum reservoir and the Syrdarya River which flows through the territory not only of Tajikistan but of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan as well. As a result, what many might dismiss as Tajikistan’s problem is a much larger one.

Scholars have determined that the radiation from these tailings in some places is more than 30 times levels that threaten human health. But the problems these tailings pose is not limited to radiation directly. They also are the source of poisonous chemicals which have leached into the ground and now appear in plants, animals, and drinking water.

The impact of the release of radioactive materials on the health of the population is already clear.

Ferghana