Russia’s chief sanitary official Gennady Onishchenko on Thursday said that Vladivostok seaport authorities have to decontaminate cars imported from Japan. Port and customs officials, however, do not believe this is workable, Moskovsky Komsomolets reports.
Customs officials in Russia’s Far East have seized 49 used cars that were shipped from Japan for showing radiation levels up to six times above normal, while some vehicles had traces of the radioactive isotopes caesium-127 and uranium-238.
“Radioactive particles can affect your system. They can be inhaled or swallowed while eating or smoking,” said Roman Fanin, who heads the regional customs' radiation monitoring department.
Vladivostok customs said decontaminating radioactive cars is expensive and they don’t have the technology to do it. Even if the costs are charged to the importers, as Onishchenko suggested, or covered willingly by the cars’ new owners, this still cannot be done in the port area, because the ensuing nuclear waste would contaminate the soil and water. This means they would have to be transported to a special site, which is also impossible because they have not been given customs clearance and therefore cannot be moved away from the port without special permits from the customs and the local consumer rights authority.
To complicate matters, radioactive cars cannot be stopped from entering the port in the first place.
Neither can they be utilized because for that, they have to be recognized as nuclear waste, and in any case, nuclear waste utilization is prohibited in Russia, said Alexander Pomykanov, head of the Vladivostok customs’ radiation department.
The contaminated cars will most likely be shipped back to Japan, or else recognized as usable in Russia, if the local consumer rights authority gives them the green light.
Russia’s Far East has always been a major hub for the supply of Japanese used cars, although the business was hit by a recent tax hike. The Vladivostok port receives about 300 cars every day, and if all contaminated cars end up stuck there, the port will soon be filled with radioactive vehicles.
The port has already complained to the regional legal authorities about the inaction of the local consumer rights watchdog which remains undecided about the contaminated vehicles’ fate.
Customs officials in Russia’s Far East have seized 49 used cars that were shipped from Japan for showing radiation levels up to six times above normal, while some vehicles had traces of the radioactive isotopes caesium-127 and uranium-238.
“Radioactive particles can affect your system. They can be inhaled or swallowed while eating or smoking,” said Roman Fanin, who heads the regional customs' radiation monitoring department.
Vladivostok customs said decontaminating radioactive cars is expensive and they don’t have the technology to do it. Even if the costs are charged to the importers, as Onishchenko suggested, or covered willingly by the cars’ new owners, this still cannot be done in the port area, because the ensuing nuclear waste would contaminate the soil and water. This means they would have to be transported to a special site, which is also impossible because they have not been given customs clearance and therefore cannot be moved away from the port without special permits from the customs and the local consumer rights authority.
To complicate matters, radioactive cars cannot be stopped from entering the port in the first place.
Neither can they be utilized because for that, they have to be recognized as nuclear waste, and in any case, nuclear waste utilization is prohibited in Russia, said Alexander Pomykanov, head of the Vladivostok customs’ radiation department.
The contaminated cars will most likely be shipped back to Japan, or else recognized as usable in Russia, if the local consumer rights authority gives them the green light.
Russia’s Far East has always been a major hub for the supply of Japanese used cars, although the business was hit by a recent tax hike. The Vladivostok port receives about 300 cars every day, and if all contaminated cars end up stuck there, the port will soon be filled with radioactive vehicles.
The port has already complained to the regional legal authorities about the inaction of the local consumer rights watchdog which remains undecided about the contaminated vehicles’ fate.