Development of a Risk Project for the Thirty-Kilometres Industrial Area of Tomsk-7. G. S. Andreev and A. L. Merzliakov, Chairman of Tomsk-7 Chapter, K. F. Vasiliev, Town Environment Protection Committee, Tomsk-7, Russia
Report analyzes the first step results of the development of a risk project for Tomsk-7 thirty-kilometre industrial area. The necessity of this project has been caused by the public's anxiety about ecological safety in the region. The purpose of the project is to assess the human health and environmental risk in the industrial area of the Siberian Group of Chemical Enterprises (SGCE). This assessment is intended to be a base for economic, technical and administrative decisions for local authorities and for the management of SGCE. The size of population in the thirty-kilometre area is about 650 thousand persons. The causes of the public's risk are: functioning of the SGCE's nuclear cycle, one of the largest in the world, its dangerous radionuclide and chemical wastes residues in the drainage basins and underground waters, functioning of the heat power plants, of the Tomsk Group of Petrochemical Plants (TGPP), the largest in Europe, and number of other enterprises. The most exposed to danger is Tomsk7, which has more than one hundred thousand inhabitants, because its housing estates are adjacent to the SGCE's sanitary-hygiene zone and in the vicinity of TGPP. The analysis of information collected on the contamination of environment and special studies has shown, that flora and fauna of the inhabited area and adjacent territories are depressed, which could not be explained only by radioactivity, because gamma-activity level do not exceeds the natural radioactivity, and the soil radionuclide contamination meets the standard requirements. Also the pollution of atmosphere, soil and plants by harmful chemicals is within the admissible limits. The realization of the investigations included in the risk project makes it possible to understand the real ecological situation and to create the scientific base for environmental monitoring. Tomsk-7 dispose the scientific, technical and economic potential to achieve this purpose.