Russia is on the verge of a major nuclear catastrophe, after flood waters penetrated uranium wells in the Urals.
The Dobrovolnoye uranium mine is located in the Kurgan region of eastern Russia, not far from the Kazakhstan border.
The uranium field is currently being developed by the Dalur company, part of the state entity Rosatom.
The Kurgan region has been affected by massive floods in the last few weeks after the main river the Tobol and its tributaries burst their banks.
The water levels swelled to twice the level of those during the last major flood in 1994 and have led to the evacuation of 10,000s of people.
The floods have been caused by rapidly melting snow and ice, as well as torrential rain.
Within the flood zone are some old uranium wells belonging to the Dobrovolnoye field, located between the villages of Zverinogolovskoye and Trud.
Sergei Eremin, a local ecologist, said that one of the wells had been “leaking for 35 years” and was highly likely to have been flooded.
New wells have been drilled higher, so are currently out of reach of the flood waters. However, if levels rise by another metre then they too could be overwhelmed.
Alexei Schwartz, a former Nalvany campaigner, has carried out extensive research into problems posed by uranium mining.
The environmentalist said he was convinced that uranium solution has seeped out of the well and into the drinking water.
He told the Moscow Times: “The uranium vein underground is not in the sarcophagus.
“For many years, the ore body was surrounded by clay layers and hard rocks of the earth at a depth of 400 metres.
“To extract uranium, hundreds, and maybe thousands of wells have been drilled to this ore-bearing body, damaging the natural sarcophagus. Now all this has got into the water.”
The leak is likely to lead to a spike in serious illnesses associated with radiation poisoning among local inhabitants.
Andrei Ozharovsky, a member of the Russian Social-Ecological Union, said that uranium is an “alpha-active drug” and that ingesting it through drinking water leads to internal radiation.
He warned that ingesting radiation internally is much more dangerous than doing so externally.
Although the radiation will be diluted by the Tobol waters, the collective doses for Kurgan residents will increase and that it was inevitable that people will fall ill.
