Radioactive waste on the move, possible threat

Kazakhstan is moving radioactive waste from the Baykonur space centre to a former nuclear testing ground in the northern Kazakh city of Semipalatinsk. Environmental NGOs told IRIN the move carried health and safety risks. "The preparatory work [on transporting the radioactive waste] has been going on for a while. It is very likely that the actual work on moving them has already started," Sergey Chelnokov, a senior expert on substance control of the Kazakh committee on nuclear energy, told IRIN from the Kazakh commercial capital of Almaty. Russia rents the Baykonur space launching site located in central Kazakhstan. According to the nuclear energy committee, the radioactive waste will be stored in special containers to prevent radiation and exclude radioactive pollution in case of an accident. "All the security measures should be adhered to and the waste will be transported by a company that has a special licence to do that," he said. During Soviet times, the Baykonur space centre was used for various space programmes and some radioactive sources have remained there since.