Russia is suspected of deliberately leaking chemical waste into a river, with deadly consequences for wildlife

Russia is suspected of deliberately leaking chemical waste into a river, with deadly consequences for wildlife.

Ukrainian officials say the Russians deliberately poisoned the Seym River, which flows into the Desna. The Desna connects with a reservoir in the Kyiv region and a water supply used by millions.

The pollution crossed the international border just over a mile away and made its way into Ukraine’s Sumy region. The Seym’s natural ecosystem crashed. Fish, molluscs and crayfish were asphyxiated as oxygen levels fell to near zero. Settlements along the river reported mass die-offs.

    • Hubi@feddit.orgEnglish
      15·
      1 month ago

      Lake Karachay was then designated a close-by and convenient dumping ground for large quantities of high-level radioactive waste too “hot” to store in the facility’s underground storage vats. The original plan was to use the lake to store highly radioactive material until it could be returned to the Mayak facility’s underground concrete storage vats, however it later became impossible due to the lethal levels of radioactivity.

      Holy shit, I’ve never heard about this before. What the hell were they thinking, a body of water has to be the worst possible choice to store nuclear waste. The whole thing is baffling.

      In 1990, the radiation level in the region near where radioactive effluent was discharged into the lake was 600 röntgens per hour (approximately 6 Sv/h) according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, sufficient to give a lethal dose to a human within less than an hour.

      Jesus Christ.