Russia groans under the weight of its rubbish

Russia groans under the weight of its rubbish

Landfill areas in Russia are bigger than some countries and authorities call for more recycling and tougher action against pollution.

With more than 2,000 square km of rubbish and solid waste rotting across Russia, the total area is six times the size of Malta.

Only 30 per cent of Russia’s waste is recycled properly, leading to 80 billion tons being dumped across the country.

The volume increases by 7 billion tons each year, the Federation Council’s first vice-speaker Alexander Torshin said at a national ecological forum, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported.

Vladimir Putin has also warned that the authorities need to act if they want to change the ecological situation in the country.

The Prime Minister said that about 15 per cent of Russian territory is in poor ecological condition, Interfax reported.

“In almost all of the country’s regions air and water pollution remain high,” Putin said at a meeting devoted to improving Russia’s ecology.

Federation Council first vice-speaker Alexander Torshin suggests that in the coming years we will begin mining trash piles for secondary resources (he continues to suggest that this could rival Gas/Oil as a source of resources/wealth)

 

(Via Johnson’s Russia List)

Medvedev sets sights on cleaner public procurement with new Russian laws

Medvedev sets sights on cleaner public procurement with new Russian laws

As three government departments set about drawing up a new Public Procurement Law, President Medvedev reiterated the need for more openness in the procurement system last week, calling for tougher anti-corruption measures.

“I repeat that we need clear, transparent and effective rules in the state procurement system, especially as concerns planning state procurement needs, setting the initial purchase prices for goods and services, and managing and monitoring the way contracts are performed,” he said at a meeting to discuss the execution of presidential instructions.

The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, the Finance Ministry and Economic Development Ministry are drawing up new legislation that better regulates the state procurement process.

Kickbacks in state procurement programs have been a serious problem in Russia, with Konstantin Chuichenko, head of the presidential oversight administration, estimating last November that they amount to one trillion rubles ($32.5 billion) a year.

(Via Modern Russia)

Russia employs Arctic brigade to defend oil and gas reserves

Russia employs Arctic brigade to defend oil and gas reserves

The move follows a muscular series of comments from the deputy head of Russia’s Border Service Colonel-General Vycheslav Dorokhin who said the Kremlin planned to build up its forces in the region to better patrol its Arctic territorial waters.

The troops will be based in the far northern town of Pechenga on Russia’s Kola Peninsula close to the Norwegian and Finnish borders and will be combat-ready later this year.

Russian military planners said they had studied the way Arctic troops in Norway and Finland operated and had ordered in the necessary winterised clothing and arms for the new brigade which could number up to 8,000 troops.

In particular, he said Russia wanted to step up patrols of the strategically important North East shipping passage.

“Our potential there will be built up. We won’t let anyone feel themselves free (to move about as they please) in the Arctic.”

Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway are all locked in a race to grab a slice of the northern wilderness after US researchers predicted that global warming might leave the area ice-free, and therefore more easily navigable and explored, as early as 2030.

Experts say the region potentially contains one fifth of the world’s oil and gas reserves and that the swath of Arctic territory claimed specifically by Russia could be home to oil supplies double the size of Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves.

(Via The Telegraph; by the interesting journalist Andrew Osborn)

A Day That Shook The World: Chernobyl disaster

A Day That Shook The World: Chernobyl disaster

On 27 April 1986, the Chernobyl atomic power plant near Kiev in the USSR exploded in the world’s worst ever nuclear disaster.

The ensuing crisis was totally mismanaged by Soviet authorities, and spread radioactive material halfway around the world, causing untold harm – and the deaths of many of the workers battling to contain the meltdown.

The disaster would put the whole future of nuclear power in doubt across the world.

Watch original British footage from the disaster after the link.

(Via The Independent.Co.Uk

Fallout from Chernobyl in Poland

Fallout from Chernobyl in Poland

 

It is not uncommon today to read, or hear that the effects of the Chernobyl accident “have been greatly exaggerated” and that “only” 31 people died immediately when the disaster occurred (particularly as people rushed to minimize the dangers posed by Japanese Reactors following the recent earthquakes).

Naturally, the former Soviet republics of Belarus and Ukraine come to mind quickly. But what about other countries?

Poland was the third country profoundly affected by Chernobyl.

It was a glorious late-spring time, sunny, warm, blue sky, light breeze. On Sunday evening, April 27th, the wind became very strong and changed direction.  Many people had similar feelings of sleeping badly that night, waking several times and sweating. “It must be that hot eastern wind”, people commented.

The sister of the journalist, aged 40 at the time, a scientist in the field of fishery and hydrobiology, spent the day working on lakes in north-east Poland, about 40 miles from the former USSR border. On April 29th, the evening news on Polish TV was interrupted by a special communiqué from Moscow. “There was an accident in Ukraine nuclear power-station. “Shortage of tincture of iodine, all sold out” – a perplexed, tired looking lady chemist announced. (Iodine tablets did not exist in Poland).

My parents had a small bottle of iodine tincture at home. Ten million Polish children continued their normal school routine getting plenty of “fresh air” in their usual sport and outdoor exercise activities.

March 18th 2011 marked the 10th anniversary of her death.

(via The Irish Times)

Remembering Chernobyl

Remembering Chernobyl

The Chernobyl disaster had only been publicized because the Soviet Union couldn’t hide it.  If the USSR had its way, Chernobyl would have been tucked in that file of previously unreported Soviet disasters, like failed moon launches, humanitarian disasters, even another nuclear accident 29 years earlier.  It was only when radiation readings rose throughout Scandinavia and meteorologists tracked back wind patterns did suspicion fall on the four reactor power plant 80 miles north of Kiev, a city the size of Chicago.
 
Initially, reporting on Chernobyl was a challenge for NBC News. (Soviet Life had featured Chernobyl, ironically enough, in an article on the Soviet Union’s great nuclear safety record!) Then, a freelance “journalist” with exclusive video of the reactor on fire approached three of the four networks’ bureaus in Rome. Apologies abounded.

Ultimately, the Soviets opened up. There were reports on Soviet television and in Soviet newspapers and scientific journals.  The eeriest part of the trip, no doubt, was watching the clean-up at Pripyat, the mini-city of 55,000 that surrounded the nuclear power plant. By Soviet standards, it was paradise. High rise towers with roomy apartments surrounded by parks, including an amusement park and a sports park that had been ceremoniously opened the morning of the accident but never used.

Two years after the accident, an army of clean-up workers were still carting away things like school desks from the local school, preparing to dismantle the steel cars from the ferris wheel at that park, all of it accompanied by classic music pumped out over an area-wide p.a. system…to help the workers avoid going crazy from the deathly silence of a city abandoned on a spring day two years earlier.  The workers were from all over the Soviet Union, drawn by the double salary, the double pensions, good housing. They talked of drinking vast volumes of red wine, ostensibly as an antidote for radiation, but no doubt for more banal medicinal purposes.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

 

(Via MSNBC)