Soviet Uranium Mines Still Have Deadly Impact in Kyrgyzstan – by Ryskeldi Satke (The Diplomat – December 13, 2016)

http://thediplomat.com/

MAILUU-SUU, Kyrgyzstan — The remote town of Mailuu Suu in South Kyrgyzstan is known for a Soviet legacy that still haunts the local population of more than 22,000.

Residents of Mailuu Suu commonly say that the very first Soviet atomic bomb was made out of locally extracted uranium in the late 1940s. The township is surrounded by uranium tailings and radioactive dumps that have been of greatest concern to the country’s neighbor, Uzbekistan, for decades.

The gravest dilemma for the Kyrgyz government is related to the frequent landslides in the areas along the river of Mailuu Suu where the Soviet government kept radioactive waste from the uranium mining. The glaciers of the southern Tian Shan feed this river, which flows directly to the neighboring republic of Uzbekistan in the Ferghana Valley.

Previously, an accident in April 1958 at the uranium tailing 7 led to the discharge of “600,000 cubic meters [of radioactive material] into the river [of Mailuu Suu],” according to an OSCE report in 2005. The demise of the Soviet Union and poor maintenance of the uranium tailings since the 1990s has raised concerns in the region and abroad, ultimately bringing the World Bank’s attention to the challenging task of remediation in Mailuu Suu.

The World Bank has invested $11.76 million into the “Disaster Hazard Mitigation” project in Mailuu Suu, which was launched in 2004 and completed in 2012. The World Bank’s objective has been focused on minimizing “the exposure of humans, livestock, and fluvial flora and fauna to radionuclide’s associated with abandoned uranium mine tailings and waste rock dumps in the Mailuu-Suu area; and improvement of the effectiveness of emergency management and response by national and sub-national authorities and local communities to disaster situations.”

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