MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th July, 2020) In this digest, we will travel to the far north of Russia to look into clean-up programs mitigating the environmental accidents, and to the northwest of the country, where small bars are facing closure because of a new law.
The spill of the aircraft fuel on the Taymyr Peninsula in the far north of Russia has been contained. The naval rescue service is cleaning up the consequences. Twenty of the service staff had been working on the clean-up of the fuel spill near Norilsk. The service sent six of them to work on the latest spill on the Taymyr Peninsula.
On Sunday, a pipeline unsealed as fuel was being pumped from a ship to a storage facility. More than 44 tonnes leaked onto a helicopter pad and nearby area.
Revegetation may take up to 30 days, according to the head of the civil defense department at Norilsktransgaz, Yevgeny Borets.
The region's authorities introduced a local-level state of emergency.
It may take 12 years to bring up decommissioned nuclear submarines currently lying on the bottom of the Kara Sea and Barents Sea, Russian experts believe, according to the nuclear sector's newspaper "Strana ROSATOM" (Country Rosatom).
This year marked the end of a four-year study of safe handling of the sunken nuclear objects. Italian company Sogin headed the international study, which put together a database of all the sunken objects, calculated a budget and timeline for their extraction.
Underwater research, development and construction of a ship that can carry out the extraction will take place between 2021 and 2026. The extraction of a K-159 submarine and disposal will take four years, from 2025-2028, K-27 will take as many years, from 2028-2031. The rest of the objects will be extracted from 2029-2032.
Two nuclear submarines are lying on the bottom of the western part of the Arctic Ocean after accidents, another one was sunk deliberately. There are also five reactor units, with and without spent fuel, and a sunken ship holding a reactor with spent fuel in the Kara Sea.
Vitaly Milonov, a member of the lower house of the Russian parliament, is asking the governor of St. Petersburg. Alexander Beglov, to either soften the law on small bars or put a moratorium on it.
The city council has recently adopted a law forbidding any bars smaller than 50 square meters (538 square feet). Earlier this year, Moscow passed a similar law.
Milonov argued that tiny bars and restaurants had become a vital part of St. Petersburg's culture.
"Tourists from all regions of Russia and from abroad are coming to St. Petersburg to enjoy the special Petersburg atmosphere of these venues. One could say that Petersburg's small restaurants and bars (working in accordance with all laws and requirements) have become a new European landmark, which brings additional funds to the city's budget," Milonov said in his letter to the governor.
The lawmaker added that the coronavirus pandemic dealt a heavy blow to the small- and medium-sized business in the city, putting many restaurant owners in a difficult situation.
"Adopting this document (in its current form) will lead to the destruction of a unique restaurant area, which will have a negative impact on the city's image and leave thousands of hard-working St. Petersburg residents without jobs. This will be a painful blow to the economy of St.Petersburg, which had just made it through the epidemic," Milonov said.
