Threat to fishing

RIGHT on the heels of the Tomsk-7 nuclear disaster, the British weekly, The Observer, reports Russia has been dumping nuclear reactors at sea and plutonium from nuclear warheads is posing a threat to international fishing grounds off the Norwegian coast. The weekly also alleges that the Russian submarine fleet is not able to operate safely, as the vessels contain excessive quantities of nuclear waste. And, The Observer goes on to add, Russia has no option but to continue dumping until new processing plants come on-stream in 1997.

Nuclear tank explodes in Siberian plant

AN EXPLODING tank of radioactive waste at a secret weapons plant in western Siberia is reportedly contaminating much of the surrounding area. In what is billed as the worst nuclear accident in the region since the Chernobyl disaster, a radioactive cloud billowed northeastward from Tomsk-7. Officials said the exact amount of radiation released from the April 6 blast was not known.

Space mirror "illumines" Europe by night

WHILE it was still dark on a recent February night, a swath of light streaked across Europe for a few moments, telling the world that brightness at midnight had become a reality.

Venomous indicator

MEASURING the radioactivity of snake venom, scientists say, can fairly accurately determine overall con7 tamination in an area. This would be particularly useful in such places as the former Soviet Union, which is contaminated by different kinds of radioactive isotopes as a result of waste released from nuclear fuel plants, accidents at atomic power stations and nuclear explosions. But worldwide recession is being blamed for a cutback in financing for

No free launches

RUSSIA has offered to trade its cut-price satellite launch potential for a guaranteed number of launches at international prices. Space agency chief Yuri Koptiev said he would accept a quota of three launches a year, one-fifth of the total world market. This would generate US $200 million for the Russians, with launch payments pegged at Western levels.

Controversy follows Russian offer

THE TEHRI dam project (TDP) is back in news. Even as engineering experts and scientists reiterated building such a high dam in a seismically sensitive region is hazardous, an offer from a consortium of Russian and Uzbek companies to finance the project brought joy to its proponents.

N - bombs cooled the Earth

The cold war between the superpowers not only left the entire world cold in fear, but perhaps also cooled the Earth, say Russian researchers K Y Kondratyev and G A Nikolsky. Their theory is that the atmospheric nuclear tests of the early 1960s released into the stratosphere vast amounts of nitrogen oxides, which combined with sunlight, expedited ozone depletion. The oxides triggered off ozone-destroying reactions, thus using up a part of the sunlight that would otherwise cross the stratosphere and warm the surface of the Earth.

Dumped with toxic moss

Australia is regretting buying a pig in a poke. A large quantity of peat moss it had imported from Russia has been found to be dusted with irradiated caesium (a soft, silver-white element of the alkali metal group, found in minerals) from Chernobyl. The moss was tested only after it had landed in the country.

An unsafe winter

A Cash-hungry Russia eyes its Siberian coniferous forests

FOUR million ha of the Siberian coniferous forest, the taiga, are cut down every year, and it is feared that this may shortly increase as controls on logging disintegrate after the break-up of the former USSR, says a report prepared by Armin Rosencranz and Antony Scott of the Pacific Energy and Resource Centre, which was published in Nature (Vol. 355 No. 6358).