Kim
Traill: |
Gosman Kabirov has lived his life in
the midst of a deadly secret. 40 kilometres upriver from his village is the Mayak Chemical Combine, the main production facility for
weapons-grade plutonium in the Soviet Union. |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
In
1957, just six months before Gosman was born, a
storage tank for highly radioactive waste exploded at Mayak.
It ended up in this river, already heavily contaminated with radioactive
discharge from the plant in the early '50s. |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
42
years later, Mayak is still in operation, Russia's
sole reprocessing plant for nuclear waste. |
|
And
Gosman's village, Muslyumovo,
is now acknowledged to be the most radioactively contaminated village on
earth. |
Girl: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Gosman has been testing radiation levels in the area for the
past 10 years. He's trying to prove that there is a link between the accident
at Mayak and the deaths and diseases which
followed. |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
This
measurement is over 80 times what is regarded as a safe level of
radioactivity. |
Kim
Traill: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
And
the compensation the villagers receive for living in Muslyumovo
is a mere 33 rubles a month, little over $2. |
Rafid M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
43-year-old
Rafid Magludtovich was Gosman's classmate at school. He has already undergone
four operations: three on his stomach, one on his spine. But he is lucky to
be alive. Many of their other classmates are already did. |
Rafid M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Rafid M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Rafid M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Rafid M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Rafid M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Rafid M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Rafid M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Rafid M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Gulfira M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Rafid's wife, Gulfira, is 44. Last
year she buried seven close relatives. |
Gulfira M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
This
is four times the size of a normal human heart. |
Gulfira M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
By
the time she reached the age of 30, the radiation had cause all Gulfira's teeth to fall out. She, Rafid,
and all the villagers in Muslyumova now have false
teeth. |
Rafid M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Gulfira M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Rafid M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Both
Gulfira's parents died from cancer, Both Gulfira's parents died from cancer, but her grandmother
is still alive. |
Gulfira M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Gulfira M.: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Over
1 million people in the Chelyabinsk region were exposed to huge amounts of
radiation following the Mayak explosion. It took
the Russian government 30 years to even admit the accident had happened. But
in spite of the mounting evidence that the health of the population has been
drastically affected, the government keeps details in strict secrecy. |
Man: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
In
1996, Gosman formed an environmental organisation
called Techa, after the river which runs through Muslyumova. |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Older
Man: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Techa is trying to make the state accountable to the victims
of the Mayak accident. They tried, without success,
to sue Mayak for compensation. |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
The
government has now put Gosman under state
surveillance. Every demonstration is videoed by the police. |
Policeman: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
They
were noted in the West, too. Techa's work won Gosman an International Soros Foundation Award. For this,
the secret police and military accuse him of espionage. |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Gosman's wife Milya is also involved
in his quest for justice for the victims of Mayak.
She has been trying to collect data on diseases and birth defects in the area
affected by radioactive fallout. Local hospitals have been very reluctant to
give out information. But recently she smuggled a Dictaphone into the clinic
at their home village at Muslyumova and secretly
recorded official admissions of the scale of the disaster. |
Milya Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Gennadi Brukhin: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Gennadi Brukhin, the professor of
embryology at the Chelyabinsk Medical Academy, has also carried out his own
unofficial research. Over the past few years, he has collected a large number
of aborted and miscarried foetuses from the region. |
Gennadi Brukhin: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
No
records have ever been kept of the number of deformities in the community.
Miscarriages and abortions weren't registered. Babies with mental and
physical disabilities that survived were taken away from their parents to be
kept out of sight in horrific state-run orphanages. |
Gennadi Brukhin: |
[foreign
language] |
Milya Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Gennadi Brukhin: |
[foreign
language] |
Milya Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Gennadi suspects the deformities are linked to radiation, but
without a comprehensive study, he can't prove it. |
Gennadi Brukhin: |
[foreign
language] |
Milya Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Milya has sent the results of her investigation so far to the
Ministry of Health, asking for a study of genetic problems caused by
radiation. Years later, she is still waiting for an answer. |
|
Rosa
Kazantseva is also still waiting for a response
from the state. She was a schoolteacher in Muslyumova
for 17 years. In 1994, her young son died in his sleep. Her daughter Ksenya was born with cerebral palsy. After years of
examinations, it has at last been officially acknowledged that Ksenya's condition was caused by Rosa's prolonged
exposure to radiation during her time in Muslyumova. |
Rosa
Kazantseva: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Rosa
and Ksenya moved from Muslyumova
three years ago to a nearby village. Consequently, they are now no longer
entitled to compensation. |
Ksenya K.: |
[foreign
language] |
Rosa
Kazantseva: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Today,
the land around Mayak is still farmed. Here, people
grow vegetables and wheat, raise cattle and pick mushrooms and berries in the
forest. Most of the population are ethnic Tatars, Muslims with traditionally
large families. But many of the generation who have grown up since the
explosion are sterile. Gosman's own family is
typical. His mother had 11 children, and was even honoured for her efforts. |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Gosman and Milya, on the other hand,
were unable to have children. |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Even
more distressing for Gosman and the villagers is
the belief that they have been used as human guinea pigs, forced to live in a
radioactive area so scientists could study the effects of radiation on a
captive population. |
Milya Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Shortly
after the accident, a new research institute was opened in Moscow. Scientists
from the Institute of Biophysics would arrive regularly in Muslyumova, taking blood and bone marrow samples from the
villagers. |
Milya Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
2,000
kilometres northwest of Mayak, on the Kola
Peninsula, is the base of the navy's northern fleet. But dozens of its
nuclear submarines and ships lie scuttled in the icy waters along the coast,
their nuclear reactors still on board, in danger of melting down or leaking.
There hasn't yet been a catastrophe to rival that which occurred at Mayak, but with each passing year, the risk grows
greater. |
|
Sergei
Fillipov is a Russian activist working for the
Norwegian environmental monitoring organisation Bellona. |
Sergei
Fillipov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Sergei
lives in Murmansk, just a few kilometres away from the northern fleet's
headquarters. This region has the highest concentration of nuclear reactors
in the world. |
Sergei
Fillipov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
In
total, 505 vessels carry nuclear weapons or are powered by nuclear reactors.
300 of those are ships, 205 are submarines. It's the largest nuclear fleet in
the world. |
|
The
United States is funding the decommissioning of many of Russia's more modern
submarines, those which pose a military threat. But it's a long and
painstaking process, hampered by a deeply secretive military and a corrupt
bureaucracy. Out of 88 submarines earmarked for decommissioning, only two
have been completely dismantled. And there is so far no offer of financial
aid for the decommissioning of the older subs which pose the greater
ecological threat. |
|
Initially,
many hoped that with the end of communism, the dangers could be overcome. But
for the environment, much has stayed the same and a lot has got worse. The
problem is that the nuclear industry is still seen as more of a security
issue than an environmental danger. So here, too, people who try to expose the
dangers aren't seen as heroes, they're seen as traitors. |
|
Like
Gosman, Sergei's every move is shadowed by the postcommunist successor to the KGB secret police, the
Federal Security Bureau. Five years ago, the FSB accused Norwegian-funded
Bellona of spying for the West. |
Sergei
Fillipov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
As
Sergei and his colleagues were being questioned in Murmansk, a coworker in St Petersburg, Alexander Nikitin,
was arrested for treason. A former chief engineer on a nuclear submarine, Nikitin spent 10 months in a maximum-security prison
without trial. Bellona eventually secured his release, but for the next four
years, Nikitin fought a vicious legal battle
against the military prosecutors. |
|
His
crime was to write a report for Bellona in which he detailed the dire
condition of the northern fleet's nuclear submarines. Not only did Nikitin's report simply compile information that was
already publicly available, a Russian law states that information regarding
ecological dangers must be revealed. But the government portrayed him as a
traitor to the motherland, a seller of state secrets. |
|
Finally,
last September, the FSB was forced to drop all charges. Nikitin
is now back at work in Bellona's Saint Petersburg office. |
Alexander
N.: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Since
former KGB spy Vladimir Putin came to power, he has further strengthened the
hand of the security services. At the time of Nikitin's
prosecution, Putin was the head of the Saint Petersburg Federal Security
Bureau. In July 1999, he advised his secret police to crack down on
international environmental groups. Alexander Nikitin
keeps a copy of Putin's decree on his desk to remind him of how little has
changed. |
Alexander
N.: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
But
the environmentalists are even more concerned about another of Putin's
initiatives. Last May, under the guise of reducing government bureaucracy,
Putin abolished the only state environmental watchdog, the Committee on
Ecology. This effectively gave complete freedom to the government to exploit
the country's resources. Activists held a mock funeral for what they saw as
the death of any state commitment to protect the environment. |
Alexander
N.: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
And
lots of it. |
Vladimir
Putin: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
In
December, parliament approved a law allowing the import of spent nuclear fuel
for reprocessing in Russia. The contracts with several European and Asian
countries are worth $39 billion. And the reprocessing plant which will take
an estimated 20,000 tonnes of spent fuel over the next 10 years is none other
than Mayak. |
Milya Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Milya Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
In
Chelyabinsk, the main city of the South Urals, downwind from Mayak, environmentalists have been alerting residents to
the coming dangers. 2 1/2 million Russians signed a petition calling for a
national referendum on the proposed import of nuclear waste. According to the
constitution, if over 2 million signatures are collected, a referendum must
be held. But the government declared only 1.9 million signatures to be valid. |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
And
that almost happened just five months ago when an accident in a nearby power
station left Mayak without electricity for over 20
minutes. |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |
Kim
Traill: |
Investigations
found the near-miss to be a result of human error. |
|
Mayak has all but destroyed a community whose ancestors have
lived here for centuries. Just outside Muslyumova,
the villagers have begun to plant a forest. They want it to be a living and
growing memorial to the victims of radiation. But should Mayak
become the dumping ground for the world's nuclear waste, they fear another
accident could destroy the people and land forever. |
Gosman Kabirov: |
[foreign
language] |