Status of Radioactive Materials in Tajikistan
By Akram Juraev, academic secretary at the International Center for the Research of Cosmic Rays of the Physical-Technical Institute of the Academy of Sciences and scientific consultant at the Academician Adkhamov Foundation, Republic of Tajikistan

Introduction
Radioactive sources in Tajikistan are used in various sectors of industry and science, but their use remains largely unregulated. In spite of the support received from the IAEA to locate orphan sources and develop the regulatory framework to ensure the radiation safety of Tajikistan, the implementation of these new rules is still far from what is needed. This article highlights the weaknesses of the existing laws and makes recommendations of ways to improve the implementation of safety regulations and prevent the proliferation and health hazards associated with the unregulated use of radioactive sources.

Use of Radioactive Sources in Tajikistan
During the Soviet era, radioisotope technologies in Tajikistan were either developed by the All-Soviet Scientific Research Institute of Radiation Equipment (VNIIRT) itself or with its mandatory participation, while equipment containing radioisotope sources was supplied, as a rule, by the All-Soviet Enterprise Isotop. There has never been any independent production of radioisotope sources in Tajikistan. Below are several examples of the application of such technologies in Tajikistan.

Geological Surveying and Mining
Radioisotope technologies were used especially intensively in geological surveying and the mining industry. The sampling of rocks during geological exploration was conducted in-situ. X-ray fluorescent methods of trench sampling (adit sampling) used radioactive isotopes of americium-241 and tin-120. In oil prospecting, various neutron logging techniques were widely applied directly in wells to identify the content of adjacent rocks using such radioisotope neutron sources as californium-252 or composite plutonium-, polonium-, or radium-beryllium sources. Radioisotopes of cesium-137 and cobalt-60 were used for purposes of sampling via density logging. In addition to their use on-site, radioactive isotopes of americium-241 and tin-120 were used to examine the elemental content of rocks using X-ray fluorescence analysis in laboratories.

Mining and processing enterprises used radioisotope techniques as early as during the first grading of rocks from adits to determine the average concentration level of minerals in them. This was necessary because significant concentration deviations inevitably cause losses of expensive flotation reagents or of the material being concentrated itself, unless there is quick intervention in the technological process. X-ray fluorescence analyses using radioactive isotopes of americium-241 and tin-120 were applied in laboratory examination of product content both on production lines and during final quality control.

Public Health and Biological Sciences
To date, Tajikistan only uses radiation therapy at the country’s main hospital—Republican Hospital No. 1 in Dushanbe. The equipment, which uses highly radioactive isotopes of cobalt-60, is used for both external and intracavitary irradiation. A large quantity of isotopes, most of which are short-lived, was used for early disease detection. The possibility of resuming research efforts at the Republican Diagnostic Center and at the Academy of Sciences biology-related scientific-research institutes is currently under discussion.

Industry
Practically every enterprise that needs to measure large quantities of different materials has nucleonic gauges that use highly radioactive cesium-137 or cobalt-60 sources. Similar equipment is used to monitor smokestacks at facilities, such as thermal power plant boilers, cement factories, and other enterprises, where smokestacks may accumulate soot or other waste that block them and reduce their effectiveness. To detect embedded/internal defects in foundry products, easy-to-operate and effective radioisotope defectoscopes were used. There are foundry shops at Tajiktekstilmash, Tajikgidroagregat, and almost all other major plants. A type of non-destructive testing, defectoscopes are “flaw detectors” that can detect defects in materials, and they use sets of radioisotope sources that possess various types of gamma radiation, which are applied depending on the material of foundry goods, their size, and other parameters.

Academic Science
Various radioisotope items are used in academic science. The range of isotopes used here varies from the lightest radioisotopes, such as deuterium and tritium, to the heaviest, such as uranium, thorium, and plutonium. While the above-mentioned industries used mostly sealed sources in ampoules, in science, various open-type chemical compounds of radioactive substances were used most often.

The range of scientific studies using such substances is similarly broad. These include problems of photosynthesis in middle- and high-mountain conditions, development of chemical technologies, new methods to study the chemical and elemental content of various substances, and many other issues.

The most stringent requirements were imposed on the use of such radioactive substances due to difficulties in their accounting and storage, and the ease of ingestion of these materials. Nonetheless, such sources would not be considered high-risk from the perspective of fueling potent radiological dispersal devices.

Regulatory Framework: Law On Radiation Safety
The first government attempts to improve controls over radioactive materials in Tajikistan faced practically insurmountable difficulties due to the results of the civil war and a large outflow of specialists. Under these circumstances, in December 1999, the Tajik government decided to join the IAEA and request its assistance both in obtaining technical capabilities and in dealing with organizational and legal issues. To the IAEA’s credit, such assistance began immediately. The first technical assistance was rendered even before the official recognition of Tajikistan as an IAEA member on September 20, 2000, at the IAEA General Conference. Despite serious financial difficulties, the Academy of Sciences assumed coordination functions in the regulation of activities related to the use of radioactive substances. The Agency for Nuclear and Radiation Safety, which was established under the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences, works in close contact with IAEA specialists.

On the whole, there has been clear progress in ensuring the radiation safety of Tajikistan. In July 2003, the ninth session of the Madzhlisi Milli (upper house of the parliament of the Republic of Tajikistan) adopted a law On Radiation Safety, which was signed by the president of Tajikistan on August 1, 2003. However, Tajik legislation fails to create a system that fully defines the responsibilities of government agencies for ensuring the safe and secure use of radioactive materials.

The following agencies were given powers as regulatory authorities in the Republic of Tajikistan:
• Ministry of Internal Affairs—responsible for issuing permits to possess radioactive substances and control of their safety;
• Ministry of Public Health—responsible for licensing activities of facilities that use radioactive substances and control of their radiation hygiene conditions and degree of pollution;
• Ministry of Environmental Protection—responsible for control of environmental contamination;
• Ministry of Emergency and Civil Defense—responsible for taking adequate response measures against the consequences of possible accidents.

However, due to the lack of regulatory legislation, the agencies listed above perform their assigned functions without mutual coordination, often duplicating each other’s functions, and do not meet international standards, such as Organization and Implementation of a National Regulatory Infrastructure Governing Protection against Ionizing Radiation and the Safety of Radiation Sources, IAEA-TECDOC-1067 (IAEA: Vienna, 1999). Thus, at present it is unlikely to find an organization in Tajikistan that can precisely determine the total amount of radioactive material in the country and describe their locations.

A major gap in the radiation safety law is that it appears to place all responsibility for implementing the law with the Agency for Nuclear and Radiation Safety under the Academy of Sciences. That agency is designated as the state regulatory authority that ensures radiation safety, conducts unified state policy, and coordinates the work of other authorized agencies. Other elements of the government, however, such as the Ministries of Heath and Interior also have important responsibilities for protecting the public from radiation but how these various authorities are to be harmonized is not specified in the Radiation Safety law.

In particular, the law does not specify controlling and licensing authorities, though it is evident that only the Ministry of Public Health can handle issues of radiation sanitation and hygiene, that the Ministry of Internal Affairs is responsible for ensuring physical safety, that the Ministry of Environmental Protection protects the environment against adverse effects, that the State Disposal Site for Radioactive Waste is designed to dispose of wastes, and that the Ministry of Emergency is best suited to respond to emergencies. The legislative consolidation of these responsibilities along with coordination and licensing by the Agency for Nuclear and Radiation Safety might become the basis for the creation of a comprehensive system to ensure radiation safety, but for now, the confusion of responsibilities continues.

Another weakness in the law is that the 24 basic concepts defined in Article 2 may confuse even experts. Although the International Basic Safety Standards for Protection against Ionizing Radiation and for the Safety of Radiation Sources, developed under the IAEA, contains a glossary that provides definitions of a number of notions that are recommended for use in IAEA member countries, the authors of the law did not use that publicly available document in their lawmaking activities.

Perhaps the law’s most serious flaw is in Article 3, Principles of Ensuring Radiation Safety. This provision was added to the text of the law from an alternative draft developed by the Academy of Sciences. But the editing of the text without the assistance of experts led to the change of one word, which resulted in incomprehensible phrasing that appears to imply that larger doses of radiation are better than lower ones. Below are the extracts from the adopted law and the draft, developed by experts:
• In the law: “prohibition of all kinds of activities involving the use of ionizing radiation sources when the dose received by humans and the public does not exceed the damage that could result from exposure to radiation exceeding natural radiation levels;”
• In the draft: “prohibition of all kinds of activities involving the use of ionizing radiation sources when the benefit received by humans and the public does not exceed the damage that could result from exposure to radiation exceeding natural radiation levels.”

This law needs revision to eliminate such errors, as well as to introduce additional mechanisms for its implementation. Such revision would also make it possible to bring it into compliance with international standards. Meanwhile, it would be prudent were the government to decide to enact the above mentioned International Basic Safety Standards for Protection against Ionizing Radiation and for the Safety of Radiation Sources for use on the territory of Tajikistan. As the country is an IAEA member, this would appear to imply that the international standards should indeed be recognized within Tajikistan.

The Current Safety Situation and Future Steps
Unfortunately, very little is being done at present to ensure the country’s radiation safety, despite the fact that the sanitary and epidemiological service of the Ministry of Public Health, chemical and radiation surveillance units of the Ministry of Emergency and the Academy of Sciences are seriously concerned with the problem. The first two agencies conduct very important work on the accounting of radioactive substances at enterprises. But due to a lack of personnel and technical capabilities, they have not been able to undertake physical inventories and have been limited to working with the documents enterprises provide.

However, it is impossible to solve the problem of radiation safety solely by addressing the issue of the accounting of radioactive substances. Export controls, for example, are another critical element in controlling radioactive materials. Tajikistan was one of the first of the post-Soviet Central Asian states to adopt a law On State Control over Export of Arms, Military Equipment, and Dual-Use Items, under which all radioactive items are subject to export controls. However, apparently, the law remained only in the form of the declaration, since no authorized body was established to implement its provisions. The inactivity in addressing export control issues in Tajikistan does not help to effectively solve the problem of radiation safety.

Urgent collection of all radioactive sources that have exceeded their service lives and have therefore become radioactive waste, and their disposal at the State Disposal Site for Radioactive Waste, should be considered another extremely important activity.

Under current economic conditions, the government is unlikely to resolve all these problems. It is precisely in this sort of case that government agencies turn to non-governmental organizations for help. These organizations can independently solve a number of problems and focus the attention of government agencies and international organizations on the most urgent problems. Such organizations do exist in Tajikistan, and they have made a number of proposals. For instance, in order to prevent possible accidents and normalize the radiation situation, the Academician Adkhamov Foundation suggested an urgent physical inventory of radioactive sources together with the registration of enterprise activities involving their use. The inventory was to include the compulsory registration of orphan radioactive sources describing reasons for losses in inventory lists. Such an inventory could be conducted jointly by representatives of the Ministries of Internal Affairs, Emergency and Public Health, along with experts of the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Education. If an announcement were made that during the inventory and for three months after its conclusion the disposal of radioactive sources would be done at state expense, and after that period, at the prices set by the State Disposal Site for Radioactive Waste, there would be an additional incentive for users to report and bring in disused radioactive sources. In addition, the Foundation’s proposal suggested that urgent measures be taken to equip relevant services of the Ministries of Emergency and Public Health with additional radiometric, radiation-measuring, and search equipment with IAEA technical assistance and funding, and that parallel searches for orphaned and abandoned sources be organized with the help of IAEA experts, who managed to find a large number of such sources at former military bases in Georgia.

These suggestions met with some success. With the help of IAEA experts and their technical support, not only were the services mentioned above successfully equipped with radiometric, radiation-measuring, and search equipment, but also several radioactive sources were found. For instance, two sources from helicopters that crashed in separate incidents were found in the mountains after the IAEA sent an expert team in August 2002.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of funds, the physical inventory of radioactive sources and inspection of storage conditions were not fully implemented. The situation remains disturbing. For example, in 2003, an empty container from a defectoscope, which usually contains highly active sources, was found at a dump near Akademgorodok. The container shielding was made of depleted uranium, which itself is very weakly radioactive.

Available estimates indicate that the cost of collecting unused radioactive sources from enterprises would not exceed $7,500-$10,000 in total. However, the search for every orphan source would require more significant funds, although this would be offset by the reduction in the danger of injury to the public.

In addition, there are several old Soviet-made americium-241 sources in Tajikistan. These sources have an essential weakness: helium accumulating in hermetically sealed sources can break the source casing, leading to the radioactive contamination of storage sites, and potentially to the ingestion of radioactive substances by plant workers. (The radioactive decay of an americium-241 atom produces an alpha particle, a helium nucleus, which can combine with electrons to form helium gas.)

It is most likely that the decontamination of storage sites and the search for other possible contaminated sites will have to be conducted after the collection of sources containing americium-241. Therefore only specially instructed personnel should be involved in the collection of such radioactive sources.

Another Adkhamov Foundation proposal was related to the prevention of the illegal possession of radioactive substances. An analysis of criminal cases involving the illegal possession of radioactive substances demonstrates that, as a rule, arrests of perpetrators occur accidentally, for instance, while inspecting vehicles. At present, such inspections are conducted in the Central Asian states on a regular basis due to a sharp increase in drug trafficking. In Tajikistan, inspection posts are located on practically all inter-district borders. Apparently, perpetrators are forced to use vehicles because of the need to pack radioactive substances into fairly heavy containers. Equipping the transport police with the simplest radiation detectors would sharply increase the probability of detecting cargoes containing radioactive materials.

Editor’s Note: In the coming years, international cooperation will continue to remain an important component of developing more effective controls over radioactive sources. Several initiatives are already in place. A trilateral program launched in May 2002 by the United States, Russia, and the IAEA initially focused on developing cooperative projects in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. The U.S. Department of Energy’s RDD program has three main options for helping to secure dangerous radioactive sources. “The first is facilitating disposition. The second is to pursue consolidation in order to minimize the number of buildings housing dangerous sources. The third option is to secure the source in place.”[1]
Sources: [1] Katherine Garner, Craig Johnson, Anne Kohnen, and Brian Waud, “Cooperative RDD Work in States of the Former Soviet Union,” Presentation at the 44th INMM Annual Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona, July 2003. [2] For a critique of this initial U.S. effort, see U.S. General Accounting Office, “U.S. and International Assistance Efforts to Control Sealed Radioactive Sources Need Strengthening,” May 2003, <www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-03-638>.

	Updated September 2005