Russian authorities reject reports of radioactive leakage into Tobol river | DW News

the flood waters are receding but while one crisis is ebbing people here might still be in deep water Russian Independent Media and environmentalists say old uranium mines have been flooded leaking radioactive material Alexa Schwarz is a physicist ecologist and opposition activist he first reported on the issue years ago thousands of radio nucleid have entered the toal river dissolved uranium has entered the river too when the alpha particles Decay and get on the skin or inside the body they cause cancer the tobal river is the water supply for Kur and human and many other cities nearby Russian nuclear energy authorities at rosatom call the reports deliberate misinformation on April 23rd State media published their response they are quoted saying the facilities uranium deposits are located at higher ground and away from the water the flood has not affected them there is no threat of flooding and the situation is being monitored but activists say that’s only half the truth the mins that are leaking are old mines they are uranium test mines from the 1980s it’s within that same deposit but these mines were drilled in the 80s a few years ago rosatom started drilling nearby and those mines are at higher ground that’s true we walked through the old mines on a dry day and there was water dripping the water is radioactive I’m used to roson lying they lied about Chernobyl and they’re still lying about uranium mining scientists fear a large number of people will be exposed to radiation and it could make them ill for now the region is battling the direct consequences of the flooding but soon they might have to deal with what’s below the surface

Flooding has devastated parts of southern Russian and Kazakhstan in recent weeks and tens of thousands of people have been displaced. But as water levels are sinking, scientists say a different crisis may be surfacing. Russian independent media and environmentalists say old uranium mines have been flooded, leaking radioactive material into the Tobol River. Alexei Shvarts, a Russian physicist and ecologist, warns that decaying uranium alpha-particles may cause cancer in humans. Russian nuclear energy authorities at state-owned Rosatom claim that the uranium mines are at no risk of flooding and that radioactive material has not been detected in water sources.

#russiaflooding #tobolriver #radioactivecontamination

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/user/deutschewelleenglish?sub_confirmation=1

For more news go to: http://www.dw.com/en/
Follow DW on social media:
►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deutschewellenews/
►Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwnews
►Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dwnews
►Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/dwnews_hangout
Für Videos in deutscher Sprache besuchen Sie: https://www.youtube.com/dwdeutsch

29 comments

  3. Russia prefers to wage war against its neighbors instead of developing its own country. Imagine Russia would have spent the 1.5 trillion stolen and spent on the war on the Russian economy, then Russia would have been the richest country in the world.

  5. RuSSians can email to their Chinese comrades and ask for lending them their geiger counters that were sold out when Fukushima was to release treated tritium waste into the sea. Chinese were hysterical and cried on their social media, how could Japan do it to them, refusing any sea food from Japan. That their own CCP was releasing far worse waste into Chinese waters, they didn't bother about that. There must be millions geiger counters in Chinese households.

  9. If only there was some sort of device to see for sure if people were being exposed to radioactivity. A 'radiation detector', if you will.

  11. They didn't care about their soldiers digging trenches at Chernobyl, why should they care about people out in the Russian countryside?

  17. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are testing American technologies using artificial intelligence that help detect potential targets on the battlefield using video footage from drones, The New York Times reported. The conflict in Ukraine, as many US officials acknowledge, has become a testing ground for some rapidly developing technologies. "At the end of the day, this is our laboratory now," said Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue.

  19. Russia government would rather allow radiation to harm its people than acknowledge the problem. Accepting the problem in Putin's view is a weakness to them therefore lives in Russia mean not much

  20. While most natural uranium will get passed if it is accidentally ingested, some of it will get absorbed. The uranium that gets absorbed will replace calcium and can stay in the body for years or decades. That's also true for many of other radioisotopes that will be found around natural uranium as most lanthanides and actinides are similar enough to calcium from a chemical perspective for the body not to be able to tell them apart.

    Natural uranium isn't overly radioactive and isn't much worse than ingesting most other heavy metals. Even U-234 has a half-life of tens of thousands of years with U-235 being in the hundreds of millions and U-238 being in the billions. The real risk from this event will be from all the other radioisotopes that will be in the soil around the uranium that will have built up over the eons. Many of those will be much more radioactive, will stick around in the body for just as long if absorbed, and be more readily absorbed by the body.

  21. Of course there is no radioactive leakage, just like there was no radioactive leakage at Chernobyl. The people worry too much about things that no not concern them. All they need to do is work hard and the state will take care of them.

  27. Rather than working on solving the problems inside russia, they spend uncounted billions on destroying other countries – currently, Ukraine.
    And the West slowly comes to the question – who's gonna be next?

Leave a Reply