Radioactive flood threat to people of Central Asia

Radioactive floodwater is threatening to sweep through one of the most heavily populated parts of central Asia after a landslide blocked a river in Kyrgyzstan and inundated a mining area dating from Soviet times.

The landslide was caused by six weeks of torrential rain in the Jalalabadskaya region of southern Kyrgyzstan. It has dammed the Mailuu-Suu river, whose rising waters have covered the waste dumps from uranium mines abandoned in the 1960s.

"The waste was dumped near the river and if the water cannot get out it might result in a serious geocatastrophe," Olga Nikolskaya, the deputy director of the Institute of Physics and Mechanics in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, said.

The waste was dumped in special concrete reservoirs in the area close to a uranium processing plant called Electroizolit. The storage facilities have not been maintained properly because of a lack of money.

Shamil Khilazhev, a spokes-woman for the local Ministry of Ecology, said heavy rains since the beginning of April had led to a series of landslides. The latest, on Sunday, caused14 million cubic feet of debris to block the river, which created a lake. The danger is that the floodwaters will break through the artificial dam. Ms Nikolskaya said that if it did, radioactive floodwater could spread into the Fergana Valley in the neighbouring republic of Uzbekistan, which is one of the most fertile and heavily populated parts of Central Asia.

"If, God forbid, something happens, it will mean a great catastrophe," she said. The landslide is about 40 miles from the border crossing into Uzbekistan at Madanyat.

The same problem had occurred in 1992, Ms Nikolskaya said, but the threat had been dealt with. "I don't know if the rain will allow us to do the same thing today," she said.

Saginova Tolkun, a journalist working in Bishkek for Radio Liberty, said the local Ministry for Emergency Situations had no money to deal with the emergency. "We have already turned to foreign countries and to Russia," she said.

The insecure dumping of waste from uranium mines and nuclear facilities has long worried foreign specialists. Some Kyrgyz officials, however, believe the risk is exaggerated. Amanbai Farnagoev, an official at the Ministry for Emergency Situations, said the containers for the radio active waste "were designed by Soviet engineers and they have a big safety margin. I do believe that the quality of Soviet engineers was really high."

Although Uzbekistan is vulnerable, an official in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, who refused to give his name, admitted: "We haven't studied this situation because this is Kyrgyzstan's territory. Our specialists weren't invited and we didn't ask to be invited."