Ecological disaster threatens Fergana Valley due to largest storage of radioactive waste 

The Fergana Valley is in danger of an environmental disaster due to the state of the world’s largest radioactive waste repository near the city of Mailuu-Suu in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, Euronews reports referring to Reuters.

According to the agency, cemeteries and an abandoned uranium mine are left without protection and maintenance, while environmentalists and doctors are sounding the alarm.

“I specifically checked it myself: in general, radiation exceeds 100 μR/h there. And in such a place, in recent years, 2-3 residential buildings have been built,” Director of the Center for General Medical Practice Mailuu-Suu Tynarbek Dokbayev said.

The Government of Kyrgyzstan recognizes the waste storage in Mailuu-Suu as one of the most dangerous in the republic. In September, at a parliamentary hearing, Deputy Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov spoke about the threat of a regional catastrophe if it is washed into the river. Environmentalists urge to take urgent action.

“Due to non-cultivation of mountain dumps, all tailing dumps simply became unusable, especially dams, which should protect them from water penetration. Imagine: 14 million people live in the Fergana Valley, in the event of a natural cataclysm, water can erode these tailings and they will fall into the Narin River – this is the tragedy of the entire Fergana Valley,” an ecologist Bolotbek Karimov believes. 

In Soviet times, one of the most important centers for the extraction and processing of uranium ores was located in Mailuu-Suu, and now the city has become the leader in the number of people with disabilities. A few years ago, as part of the WB program, one of the 23 cemeteries that remained from the closed mining and processing plants was transferred to a safer place.

In 2020, the government plans to begin restoration of storage facilities using a grant from the EBRD, which allocated €82 million for the rehabilitation of radioactive burial sites in Central Asia.