MOSCOW, September 11. /TASS/. Volunteers of the Clean Arctic environmental project on Cape Chelyuskin prepared 800 empty iron fuel barrels for loading onto the ship, the project's press service said, pointing to complicated conditions in the tundra.
"They have prepared for shipment 800 empty fuel barrels. The barrels are shipped in nets 50-80 barrels at a time, since the helicopter can lift 2.5 tons of cargo. Not to damage the tundra surface, the volunteers rolled the barrels manually, and the most important task was to manage collecting the barrels before frosts that are forecasted by the end of this week," the press service said.
In Eurasia's northernmost point, on Cape Chelyuskin, about 40,000 barrels of petroleum products have accumulated on an area of about 40 hectares. Fuel and other cargoes were brought to Cape Chelyuskin since the 1930s, for almost 90 years. Besides, there are other forms of scrap metal there: remnants of machinery, equipment, towers, ladders, platforms.
The scrap metal is being loaded onto the Mikhail Somov scientific expedition vessel. As the loading is finished, the ship along the Northern Sea Route will take the volunteers after a two-month expedition to Tiksi, from where they will take a flight to Moscow.
The Clean Arctic project began in 2021. Over this time, 7,700 people from across the country have collected 19,800 tons of waste, and cleaned 791 hectares of Arctic land. The project's general partner is the Rosatom state-run corporation, with TASS as its general information partner.