Russia challenged by nuclear woes

[jpak]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4759224.stm

The new boss of Russia's nuclear industry, Sergei Kiriyenko, has announced ambitious expansion plans which alarm environmentalists worried about continuing radioactive contamination.

This week prosecutors charged the director of Russia's main nuclear waste processing plant - Mayak in the Urals - with violating safety rules.

Vitaly Sadovnikov is accused of allowing many tons of liquid radioactive waste to be discharged into the River Techa in 2001-2004.

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The Mayak plant was also the scene of a major nuclear accident in 1957, when a waste storage facility blew up, releasing 20 million curies of radiation into the atmosphere. The scale of the disaster was kept secret by the Soviet authorities at the time.

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