MOSCOW, November 10. /TASS/. About 12 million tons of radioactive waste could leak into the Dnieper River and subsoil waters as Ukraine is struggling to store it properly, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
"This waste is a significant and dangerous source of environmental contamination. There is a high probability of about 12 million tons of radioactive waste leaking into the Dnieper River and underground water as a result of a possible washing away of a part of the dam at one of the storage facilities located 800 meters from the river and its tributary Konoplyanka. About 14 tons of radioactive dust is spread annually across the surrounding area, with some of it ending up on farmlands," she said in a statement on the ministry’s website.
"The situation around the storage of hazardous radioactive waste in Ukraine is becoming horrific," Zakharova added. "Indeed, the total amount of waste generated from the processing of uranium ore at the Pridneprovsky Chemical Plant in the city of Kamenskoye (formerly Dneprodzerzhinsk) stands at 42 million tons. To store it, there are several storage facilities and workshops to produce uranium oxide within the plant’s limits and outside them, taking up a total area of about 600 hectares."
"According to our data, Kiev does not allocate funding to ensure the environmental safety of the facilities at the Pridneprovsky Chemical Plant, which may eventually lead to an environmental disaster not only on the territory of the country that’s controlled by the Kiev regime, but also beyond that area," the spokeswoman said.