Russia and the United States withdrawing from Antarctica radioactive devices

Fear was that terrorists used the material to create "dirty bomb".


Under a joint program to reduce threats, Russia and the United States withdrew from Antarctica radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG), informed the head of Expedition Russian Antarctic and deputy director of the Arctic Research Institute and Antarctica, Valeri Lukin, the from Tass news agency.


The GTR are used in the Antarctic as power sources for radio beacons and weather stations. Its fuel consists of radioactive elements such as strontium or plutonium, which turns them into a kind of nuclear minirreatores used when it becomes impossible to perform the supply of fuel for generators gasoline or diesel.

Given their radioactive potential, when left in inhospitable regions, GTR represent a danger to the environment. Furthermore, they may become an easy target for terrorists or non-ferrous metals hunters, Lukin said.

Created in 1991, the US Congress of the program named Joint Threat Reduction considers the GTR also a danger for them make possible the spread of radioactive materials that can be used to build a "dirty bomb" (radiological weapon that disperses materials Radioactive through a shock wave). The program's goal is to find these devices and take them out of Antarctica in order to be recycled. Thus, the United States Department of Energy signed an agreement for the withdrawal of radioactive products of the Antarctic continent with the Research Institute of Arctic and Antarctic Russian agency Roshydromet.

Data IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) show that in 2013 there were four in Antarctica GTR Beta type left by former Soviet expeditions on the continent. Removal and recycling have become one of the expedition's mission objectives currently working on Russian territory of Antarctica.


According to Valeri Lukin, the removal of radioactive equipment of Antarctica "is a perfect example of that, in spite of the great contradictions, Russia and the United States can, effective and rational manner, cooperate with each other."

According to Lukin, a part of the basement of scientific and expeditionary ship Akademik Fiodorov, the Russian Antarctic Expedition, it has been specially converted for the transport of radioactive sources of Antarctica. To bring the GTR for recycling, the authorities of Russia and the United States agreed to dock the ship in ports of Germany and Argentina. According to Lukin, it was particularly difficult to negotiate with Germany, a country whose national law prohibits completely the use in their country of radioactive materials and even its entry into the country for a short period.