ENVIRONMENT: Dangerous Nuclear Hangover To Go

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Sep 25 2006 (IPS) - A decision to send 2.5 tonnes of radioactive nuclear rods back to Russia finally ends concerns over the presence of the nuclear waste near capital Belgrade.

“We have finally neutralised the long-term danger,” Serbian Science Minister Aleksandar Popovic told reporters in Belgrade Monday. “Vinca (16km from Belgrade) will no longer be a threat to the environment, which was our basic concern, as we inherited an issue that had been neglected for decades.”

The Serbian minister spoke for the first time about Vinca in public after he signed an agreement last week with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna.

The agreement provides for removal of the radioactive nuclear material lying at loosely guarded premises at the Nuclear Institute of Vinca, once the pride of science in communist former Yugoslavia.

The packaging, removal and transportation to the country of origin will be a daunting task that will cost 10 million dollars, the minister said. The money has been provided by several donor countries, the minister said.

“We hope that in the second half of 2008 the transportation will be over, and the Vinca issue as we know it now will be closed once and for all,” Popovic said.

About 8,000 highly radioactive rods remain in a basin of dirty water at Vinca. The premises are fenced in by rusty barbed wire, and secured by only a few guards. The rods are made of plutonium and uranium.

The Vinca centre was founded in 1948 with the help of the former Soviet Union. The nuclear material at the clandestine but ambitious project was enough to build two atomic bombs at the time. No one knows who the bombs could have been used against or sold to.

After an accident in 1958 when a scientist died and five were injured in a radiation leak, the idea of a Yugoslav atomic bomb was put aside.

The two reactors then served as an education centre for physics students, but were finally closed down in 1984.

The media showed some interest in the decaying Vinca nuclear facility in 1999 at the time of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing of Serbia. Fears grew that any direct on the site could lead to serious radioactive contamination of large parts of Serbia.

Four years ago, some 48kg of highly enriched uranium fuel was removed from Vinca by the IAEA and the U.S., Russian and Serbian governments. The fuel was transported to a disposal facility near Dimitrovgrad in Russia.

Earlier this month the facility was back in the news when special programme manager at the IAEA Michael Durst said the Vinca site topped the global priority list of unsecured uranium sources because it combined “the threats of nuclear proliferation and environmental disaster.”

“Vinca is unique in the amount of uranium stored within its facility and the fact that about 30 percent of it is leaking,” Durst warned. “It would be easily accessible to an organised group.” The IAEA said it could attract terrorists seeking to build a “dirty” bomb.

Some experts say it is enough to tie a single fuel rod to conventional explosive to create a dirty bomb, which could scatter radioactive debris across a wide area. But Serbian officials said this was possible only theoretically.

“That is something impossible, not even supposed to be shown in James Bond movies,” Popovic told IPS.

His deputy Ivan Videnovic told IPS that “even if someone entered the Vinca premises to steal a rod, it would be lethally hazardous to take the material away due to radiation, and impossible to smuggle it out of the country.”

The installation became a priority for the IAEA because “it contains the largest amount of nuclear fuel exported from the former USSR, more than 50 percent of it,” he added.

Videnovic said 17 similar installations exist in former communist countries, and similar clearing exercises are now being carried out in Uzbekistan.

“This is something inherited, decades old,” Popovic told IPS. “But we have to solve the problems created by someone else, and the time is finally right to do so.”