TITLE: Secret Cities, Glasnost and Global

Environmental Threats

AUTHOR: Murray Feshbach

Georgetown University

THE NATIONAL COUNCIL

FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN
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SECRET CITIES, GLASNOST AND GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS

by

Dr. Murray Feshbach

Georgetown University

Tomsk-7 is one of 10 former closed nuclear cities of the former Soviet Union. Or
perhaps one of the 16 secret cities (including chemical/biological warfare activities) or
perhaps 29, 30, 60 or 87all of which numbers are propounded by Soviet/Russian sources.
Regardless of which number is correct, on April 6, 1993, an accident occurred at Tomsk-7
releasing radioactive contamination into the atmosphere. Early investigation found an
improper procedure performed by the staff which led to a chemical reaction which then
exploded in the storage tank. Currently, the amount of radiation released is uncertain.
Russian governmental investigators, international agency inspectors and non-governmental
organizations (Greens, in particular, the Socio-Ecological Union) are provisionally giving
different numbers and potential danger. Different numbers, or better evaluation, also has
affected the estimate of radioactive nucleides emitted by the Chernobyl accident on April 26,
1986. Until several months ago, the standard figure was 50 million curies; the spokesman
for the Ministry of Atomic Industry of Russia, and others, are now citing a figure 60 percent
higher80 million curies. In comparison, Three Mile Island released the grand total of 15.
curies outside the containment structure. The original territory enumerated as contaminated
by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Russia was the Bryansk Oblast (an oblast equates
approximately to an American state), two additional oblasts in Belorus and 2 in Ukraine. We
now knowuntil the figures are revisedthat instead of 1 oblast contaminated with an
average of 1 curie of Cesium-137 per square kilometer in Russia alone the number of such
oblasts is now counted as 15 (plus one higher-ranking territoryMordovia), 12 not 2 in
Ukraine, and 6 not 2 in Belorus. Moreover, the initial classification of Bryansk as the
territory which suffered most in Russia, may be questioned if one ignores hot spots of
radioactivity, by looking only at the average proportion of territory "irradiated." Bryansk

oblast is "only" 17.3 percent contaminated, but Orlovskaya is 37.2 and Tul'skaya oblast is
39.7 percent contaminated with Cesium-137, a contaminant with a 30-year half-life of
radiation. Again, the point is not so much to concentrate on Chernobyl per se, but to
indicate that the problem is long-lasting, that numbers of threat to the local and perhaps
foreign populations may be much higher than ever admitted.

And what is being admitted, thanks to the latest round of glasnost is the existence and
some details of the activities of the various secret citiessecret because they were closed,
were not shown on any Soviet map, were not counted in the population or the labor force
(some 900,000 persons in all), and their activities, not discussed seriously (according to a
Soviet source) until one year ago. At a May 1992 meeting in Stavenger, Norway, Viktor
Mikhaylov, the Minister of Atomic Industry of Russia, indicated that they were part of the
military-nuclear industry. Chelyabinsk city is shown on a map of Russia, but Chelyabinsk40, Chelyabinsk-65, and Chelyabinsk-70 are not. Krasnoyarsk city is shown, but no
reference or indication of Krasnoyarsk-25, Krasnoyarsk-26 and Krasnoyarsk-45 (and perhaps
also a Krasnoyarsk-35 and a Krasnoyarsk-95which also are referred to in the literature).
Nor was Zlatoust-36, Penza-19, Sverdlovsk-44 and Sverdlovsk-45, Zagorsk-7, Arzamas-16,
and several without numbers (as far as is known to this point, or perhaps they are alternative
names as Seversk is for Tomsk-7, Ozersk for Chelyabinsk-65, Sarov for Arzamas-16)
Angarsk, Nizhnaya Tura, Zarechnyy, Sosnovoborsk and likely, Kurchatov also should be
included. Sillamae in Estonia, Aralsk-5 in Kazakhstan (is there a Semi-Palatinsk-21 also?),
and Zheltyye Vody in Ukraine also should be included in the list of secret cities. The range
of cities indicated here does not include secret laboratories, secret plants, secret islands (e.g.,
secret laboratories on Vozrozhdeniye and Komsomol'sk islands in the Aral Sea), etc., as the
list would be too long. Perhaps two-thirds or more of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg's
industry, was fully or partially related to the military sector. Conversion of these facilities,
as well as those of the cities of the Atomgrad network, is going apace, sometimes slower
(even mostly slower) and sometimes faster, as they attempt to integrate into the civilian
economy. Concern by western governments over a nuclear brain drain from going to other
non-proliferation signatory countries and/or to terrorist organizations, and to control nuclear

materials, is in part the underlying rationale for much aid going to the former Soviet Union.
But much is not controlled, as witnessed by the growing number of incidents of attempts to
smuggle out and then to sell nuclear materials, to the disappearance of guards who are not
paid or vastly underpaid relative to an inflation rate of 2,539 percent (officially) in 1992 and
therefore less attentive as they make arrangements or perform other work, and poor
operational security ensues even if they are nominally on the job.

Moreover, we are just beginning to learn about the activities, and specifically about
the stockpiles of hazardous nuclear and chemical materials at these secret cities and facilities.
As a consequence, they engender concern about global and regional environmental threats.
For example, when in Moscow earlier this year I was told that Chelyabinsk-40 (sometimes
Chelyabinsk-65) stockpiles 27 tons of weapons grade plutonium; other sources indicated 40
and even 100 tons of this extremely hazardous material. Much uncertainty can be stipulated
about the care, dismantling, defusing, or detoxifying of this and other atomic, chemical and
biological materials which may be revealed when more information is forthcoming. Among
the worst hazardous materials of which we are currently informed appears to be heptyl, the
liquid rocket fuel used for Soviet/Russian missiles. It is classified as supertoxic,
carcinogenic, nerve paralyzing and volatile. In fact, some 2 months ago, the Plastpolimer
Plant in Leningrad Oblast, which produces liquid rocket fuelunspecified, but undoubtedly
heptylhad an explosion during the night. The blast of the explosion blew to pieces 3 of the
5 nighttime workers! If this fuel is the same unsymmetric dimethylhydrazine, known as
heptyl, whichever country's disarmament personnel are involved in eliminating this material
should be extremely careful, to say the least. There may be some 150,000 tons of heptyl in
these closed cities, in missiles stationed elsewhere, in production, etc. No known technology
exists for dealing with heptyl. Technical assistance in all matters, but in this one in
particular, should be entrusted only to extremely careful individuals. Too many examples in
the former Soviet Union exist of individuals such as the former director of the South
Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant who turned off the safety valves at the plant 3 times in the
past year despite all stringent regulations post-Chernobyl to such a procedure. He was fired
finallybut only after the third such incident!

We are learning more now about he dumping of radioactive waste, nuclear subs with
live reactors and control rods, a nuclear icebreaker also with live nuclear facilities, 3 ships in
Murmansk harbor with radioactive waste, about radioactivity coursing through the Ob and
Yenisey rivers of Siberia toward the Arctic Ocean (and possibly Japan and the Koreas, as
well as Alaska, Canada and others of the Pacific Rim). In addition, there are about 160
nuclear submarines awaiting dismantlingand with a bad track record of accidents, including
the release of radioactivity in the Sea of Japan area, in the north near Severodvinsk-the
nuclear submarine producing port, the 115 so called "civilian" nuclear explosionswith
residual, largely subsurface radioactivity in Kazakhstan, Yakutiya (now known as Sakha
Republic), and from 24 such explosions in the Volga Region, among others. Potential
business investors should be aware of these locations throughout the former USSR.

From a global or transboundary perspective, the threat ensues from an inheritance left
from activities of the Soviet military and other authorities, as well as unconstrained economic
activitieswithout any care for the land, air, water, people, natural resources. One example
is the major threat to the population of countries bordering the Black Sea. As in Lake Chad
during the past decade, a major population loss will occur when the residual hydrogen
sulphide in the water emanating from industrial and other dumping sources into the Danube,
the Dnieper, and other rivers of the Black Sea Basin, reaches the surface. When it does
explodeas Lake Chad exploded and where "only" 1,000 or so people diedthen hundreds of
thousands likely will die among the population resident in the region of this Sea. The dome
of hydrogen sulphide has risen from 250 meters below the surface to some 50 meters from 2
decades ago to the present. Whether the dome will continue to rise depends of the
continuation of pollution from uncontrolled, untreated effluent. The 10 Baltic Sea countries
are awarebut few others outside the regionof the chemical weapons dumped into the Baltic
Sea. What may be as much as 400,000 tons of such weapons dumped by the Soviet Union,
Britain and Germany after the Second World War, in and out of containers, may corrode
after 50 years (1945 to 1995) and leak large amounts of poisons into the Sea. The chemicals
may leak slowly and thus be hydrolyzed, or leaked simultaneously whereby it would
overwhelm the diluting action of the sea if this rapid breakdown of the weapons occurs. The

same could be said of the 13,000 to 17,000 containers of nuclear waste in the Barents and
Kara Seas, which if also slow in corroding and leaking also would be much less of a hazard
than if they relatively simultaneously released their terrible contents.

The list goes on and on, to include health issues which directly or indirectly emanate
from the environmental disaster that was the Soviet Union. The tasks involved in cleaning
up, of disarmament and dismantling, of defusing and detoxifying, of health improvements are
enormous. We need understanding in great detail and need to have bi-lateral and multilateral approaches in order to be successful. Failure to do so, leaves Europe, Japan, the
United States, Canada, the Middle East, all at hazard.

The United States does not have sufficient money for all of these requirements, but it
does have the technical capabilities, management, and environmental leadership to help the
new members of the international community with their staggering environmental problems.
The provisions of the Nunn/Lugar legislation, as well a Project Peace sponsored by Senator
Inouye, directs the U.S. Department of Defense and their internal components to assist and
provide expertise in these matters for the former Soviet Union. To date, the legislative
mandate has not been implemented rapidly enough by the Department of Defense. All the
aid packages in the world will not help Russia and other former members of the USSR in
resolving their economic and political dilemmas if they are undergoing environmental and
health disasters at the same time. The former Soviet Union will not be able to heal itself
without such effective leadership and contributions from the outside.

Murray Feshback is Research Professor of Demography, Georgetown University, and coauthor of Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege (with Alfred Friendly, Jr.),
New York, Basic Books, 1992.