EDITORIAL
Remembering the Horror of Russia’s Mayak Atrocity
A recent independent news report out of Australia reminds the world of what Russia has become under the “leadership” of Vladimir Putin — a toxic waste dump, the world’s nuclear toilet.
Russians, you see, hate it when foreigners look down on them and use them to wipe their feet — until Russians don’t hate it, and actually encourage it. It seems Russians have absolutely no problem with such attitudes by foreigners if Vladimir Putin, their anointed holy deity, is the one encouraging them to happen.
What a country! The details of Russia’s toxic nuclear quagmire are truly shocking, but even more so is the Kremlin’s total failure to try to protect Russians from the nightmare, and indeed its taking every possible step to make the problem much worse..
For background, check out the horrifying special website created by Greenpeace to document the ongoing atrocities being perpetrated against the people of Russia by their own government in and around the infamous Mayak nuclear plant located between Samara and Chelyabinsk in central Russia. Read the stories of the people who live in this blighted area, whose children drop like flies from radioactive exposure. If you have the courage, look at the photographs of those who have been destroyed by the horror.
Then think about this: Instead of shutting down the Mayak facility, one of the most toxic places on this planet, the Putin regime is dramatically increasing the risks to local people by bringing in even more nuclear waste from foreign countries who do not want to take the risk of storing it themselves. The Australian report accuses Germany of violating its own domestic laws in doing so.
Apparently, Russians in general and Vladimir Putin in particular have given up hope of being able to compete with the outside world in any normal sphere of economic activity, but they feel they may be able to do so in the area of toxic garbage dumps.
And who can say they are not right?
La Russophobe 
Link’s broken, the proper one:
http://www.indymedia.org.au/2010/11/21/berlin-breaks-german-law-to-dump-nuclear-waste-in-russia
More:
“Even today people are dying from the long-term effects,“ says Kuznetzov. Mayak is also still used by the Russian nuclear sector. The military produces nuclear material there, and the plant also processes nuclear waste.
Has Russia learnt from the Mayak accident? Kusnetzov does not think so. The last federal nuclear security programme, he says, expired in 2006. ”Only 12% of the programme was actually funded,” he maintains, and therefore many control mechanisms were never implemented.
http://www.russia-now.info/russia/russia_news/the_mayak_nuclear_disaster_50_years_on_14.html
The Mayak complex is blamed for contaminating the nearby Techa River, the area’s only source of drinking water.
The region records high incidences of cancer, sterility, heart diseases, and asthma. But authorities have consistently refused to close down the facility.
Russia plans to build 40 new nuclear reactors in the country by 2030, and hopes to build as many as 60 additional reactors for clients abroad.
http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1078826.html
Sincere thanks LR for bringing this shameful episode, in communist Russia’s past, to light.
The silence of ‘Dima’ and his fellow Russophiles on this subject is deafening in the least.
You found a fitting ally in Greenpeace. Greenpeace’s truthfulness is well-known around the world….