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#1
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12-29-2010, 10:25 AM
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 My Rank: GUNNERY SERGEANT Poster Rank:621 Male Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 1,472 Mentioned: 0 Post(s) Quoted: 3 Post(s)
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Siberian Wasteland
When you arrive at the Arctic Coast of Russia, the first thing you can see is tons of garbage and rusty barrels. Any attempts at industrialization of the Arctic territories has always been accompanied by its terrible pollution. The Wrangel Island, also known as a maternity hospital of the polar bears. A great number of polar owls, white geese, brant geese, Arctic foxes, walruses and other animals live here. Today, safety of the natural resources of this island is provided by the absence of population. But earlier, the government tried to explore new territory using different methods. So a trading station, reindeer farm, military airdrome and anti-aircraft defense base have been built here at that time. Tons of fuel and lubricants, work equipment and food provision for 200 residents of a small village have been delivered to this place. But then people left it, and all the garbage and idle equipment remained on its junkyards. Sometimes empty barrels were taken out of the island by empty ships on their way home. But that was unprofitable because barrels should have been crushed on the shore before being loaded on the ship. The problem is that there are no equipment that could accomplish this on the island. All scrap metal is concentrated on the South coast – the very place where all the organizations were situated. Nowadays most of the barrels became worthless but there are still some tonnes of gasoline, oil and diesel fuel inside them. These substances leak from the rusty barrels and pollute soil. But rusty barrels do seem very harmless in comparison with hundreds of radioactive batteries used for powering navigational aids in the Soviet time. In 2004 the Wrangel Island was given a status of the area of World Natural Inheritance but with one condition – to clean the territory from the garbage. There isn't however enough workers and money to fund the clean up. But the most ridiculous thing is that the Wrangel Island wasn’t included into the (Russian) National Program of Action for the Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment.   ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  · |
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#2
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12-29-2010, 10:30 AM
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| My Rank: GUNNERY SERGEANT Poster Rank:621 Male Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 1,472 Mentioned: 0 Post(s) Quoted: 3 Post(s)
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Re: Siberian Wasteland
For many years something has been taken to the Far North. After half a century it has become clear that plenty and diversity of scattered and non-utilized scrap is dangerous for the health of local people. Toxic substances from thrown barrels go to the waters of the Chukchi and Bering Seas. And this fact worries the US, because it’s very close to Alaska. So Americans took part in financing the project on utilization dangerous and rusty waste. To the summer of 2008 about 2600 barrels were gathered. And many more are expected to gather still.  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·  · |
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#10
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01-18-2011, 01:37 AM
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 Der übliche Verdächtige Poster Rank:971 Peckerwood Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 735 Mentioned: 0 Post(s) Quoted: 4 Post(s)
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Re: Siberian Wasteland
The Russians have finally gotten around to removing the radioactive material from the NUCLEAR powered lighthouses. An article I read in Pravda last year said a couple of hunters came across some wreckage in the Urals and decided to camp there. One piece of scrap was warm, so one of the men decided to sleep next to it. He ended up dying of radiation poisoning because the warmth was coming from a plutonium core. I hope to God terrorists don't get their hands on nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union.
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