MOSCOW, November 6. /TASS/. The Clean Arctic environmental project's volunteers developed standards for cleaning hard-to-reach Arctic territories. They used experience of a cleanup mission at Cape Chelyuskin, from where over two years the project participants removed eight tons of waste, Clean Arctic's press service told TASS.
Cape Chelyuskin's polluted area is about 40 hectares that keep big amounts of scrap metal - remnants of machinery, equipment, towers, ladders, platforms and about 40,000 empty barrels. Metal had been accumulated at Eurasia's northernmost point for almost 90 years - since the 1930s, fuel and equipment have been brought there for the polar station.
"We hope that when the mission at Cape Chelyuskin is completed, a new chapter of history will begin there. It is not only an important geographical point on the Northern Sea Route, it is also an indicator of the region's environment conditions, where meteorologists monitor climate change," the press service quoted the project's leader Andrey Nagibin as saying.
Jointly with weather forecast specialists of the Northern Department for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring, the volunteers prepared recommendations on safe waste management. The developed methods observe peculiarities of the tundra soil. "In the Arctic, the tundra surface is very vulnerable due to the thin vegetation layer. Heavy machinery, used in the cleaning, will damage the entire cover, which will either never recover or which will be recovering for decades," the press service told TASS.
Clean Arctic's recommendations include rolling barrels manually, draining fuel before transportation, and sawing large structures into fragments for helicopter delivery. Collected scrap metal is put into nets and a helicopter transports the nets onto the ship. The waste is placed in the holds. The cargo weight is calculated from the vessel's draft, and at the port the cargo is transferred to licensed processors.
At Cape Chelyuskin, volunteers tested the "Northern Removal" technology - to use routes of vessels that deliver vital cargo to the North (the so-called Northern Supplies program). A helicopter takes the collected scrap metal, packed into nets, onto the Mikhail Somov ship that brings the waste for further processing to Arkhangelsk along the logistics chain that is used for the Northern Supplies program. The Clean Arctic project has used this option to remove eight tons of waste over recent two years.
About the project
The Clean Arctic project began in 2021. Over this time, almost 10,000 people from across the country have collected about 22,000 tons of waste, and cleaned more than 1,000 hectares of Arctic land. The project's general partner is the Rosatom state-run corporation, with TASS as its general information partner.