TEKS:

1. TEKS: • WG 8b – Compare ways that humans depend on, adapt to and modify the physical environment through national activities in a variety of technological contexts. • WG 20c – Describe the impact of new technologies. • WG 10b - Explain how traditional, command, and market economies operate in specific countries. • WG 2a – Describe the human/physical characteristics of the same place at different periods of history.

2. THE DISASTERS OFTHESOVIETUNION • The Aral Sea • The Baikal Sea • Chernobyl

3. DIRECTIONS: • On the front of your paper record 15 total facts. • Five facts for each of the three areas: Aral Sea, Lake Baikal, and Chernobyl • On the back you will answer questions at the end of the slide show.

4. THE ARAL SEA • The Russian government, led at the time by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, decided in 1918 that the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya in the south and the Syr Darya in the northeast, would be diverted to try to irrigate the desert.

5. The water was used to grow rice, melons, cereal, and also, cotton; this was part of the Soviet plan for cotton, or "white gold", to become a major export.

6. Running the Sea dry?? • By 1960, 20 and 50 cubic kilometers of water were going each year to the land instead of the sea. • Most of the sea's water supply had been diverted, and in the 1960s the Aral Sea began to shrink. • 1961 to 1970, the Aral's sea level fell at an average of 20 cm a year • 1970s, the average rate nearly tripled to 50–60 cm per year • 1980s average: 80–90 cm each year. • The amount of water taken from the rivers doubled between 1960 and 1980; cotton production nearly doubled in the same period.

7. The Karakum Canal • Provides water to the more areas along southern Turkmenistan • Criticized because of the amount of water diverted from the shrinking Aral Sea • With out the Karakum Canal there would be little to no agriculture in the Southern parts of Turkmenistan

8. As a Result…

10. Dust stormsThe Karakum and Kyzylkum Deserts now meet on the Aral's former seabed. The three million hectares of the seabed exposed to weathering has increased soil salinization and desertification around the sea. Dust storms scour the seabed and neighboring areas, scattering salt and pesticide residues over the whole region. By 1993, some 75 million metric tons of dust and salt were being dumped on surrounding lands. Salts from the Aral Sea have even been traced as far away as Belarus, over 1,000 kilometers to the northwest.

11. Categories of Soils by Salinity Levels • As salinity levels increase, plants extract water less easily from soil. High soil salinity can also cause nutrient imbalances and cause the process of desertification to speed up.

12. . "We have high levels of heavy metals, salts and other toxic substances in our drinking water supplies, and the bulk of our vegetables are contaminated with organochlorine pesticides, such as DDT which is still used here in great quantities." And many women have high levels of lead, zinc and strontium in their blood." Apparently, the high strontium levels are due to the testing of atomic and hydrogen bombs in the region during the 1950s and 1960s.

13. LAKE BAIKAL AREA

15. LAKE BAIKAL (Baykal) • Lake Baikal holds as much water as ALL of North America’s Great Lakes. • The warm-water springs support a variety of fish and animals. One type of shrimp helps keep the water pure by filtering algae and bacteria. • Russia conquered the area in the 1600s and in 1923 the land became a separate Soviet republic (state). • In 1957 the government announced plans for construction of a Cellulose-Paper Plant at one end of Lake Baikal in order to produce cellulose that is used in jet airplane tires.

16. “In ancient times all life was considered sacred. Now those times are gone, nobody thinks about it anymore”, - a bouryat woman. 1. The Baikal paper plant dumped hazardous chemicals into the southern part of the lake. Pollutants from smokestack killed nearby forests. 2. Russian factories spew dangerous materials into the air. 3. Nuclear waste threatens Russia’s river. 4. Oil from poorly maintained pipelines leaks into the permafrost of Arctic Russia.

18. BLACK SNOW • Russia’s Kola Peninsula 200 miles above the Arctic Circle has black snowfall. • This peninsula is one of the dirtiest places on the globe. • Here the world’s oldest and biggest nickel smelter produce half of the world’s nickel. Each year heavy metals and sulfur dioxide are poured into the air – more than ALL of Scandinavia’s factories.

19. Beautiful landscape picture of the Kola Peninsula. • You would never know that here secrets are kept.

20. DANGEROUS SECRETS • Russia has had several nuclear disasters that have been kept secret. • In 1957 in the Ural Mts. a holding tank for liquid nuclear waste exploded • Lake Karachi is used to store radioactive waste. • The 1957 explosion caused the Russians to secretly pump billions of gallons of nuclear waste directly into the earth. This violates world standards for nuclear waste disposal.

21. ANOTHER ECONOLGICAL DISASTER • In 1994 a leaking oil pipeline at Usinsk in the Russian Arctic spilled 2 million barrels of hot oil into the fragile permafrost. • The oil company rigged a dam to contain the oil. The dam burst, the oil gushed out in a stream that was more than 3 feet deep and 14 yards wide. The river of oil extended nearly 7 miles.

22. IT’S A FACT • Only 20 percent of Russian drinking water meets standard health requirements. • Nuclear radiation is thought to have affected at least 4 million Russians. • As much as 15 percent of Russian farmland may be contaminated with chemicals and acid rain.

23. CHERNOBYL

24. Chernobyl The Chernobyl disaster was an accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26, 1986 at 01:23 a.m., consisting of an explosion at the plant and subsequent radioactive contamination of the surrounding geographic area.

25. CONTAMINATION • It is regarded as the worst accident ever in the history of nuclear power. A plume of radioactive fallout drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, the UK, Ireland and eastern North America. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. About 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus

29. The now-independent countries of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus have been burdened with the continuing and substantial decontamination and health care costs of the Chernobyl accident. It is difficult to tally accurately the number of deaths caused by the events at Chernobyl, as the Soviet-era cover-up made it difficult to track down victims.

30. Right after the accident, the main health concern involved radioactive iodine, with a half-life of eight days. Today, there is concern about contamination of the soil with strontium-90 and caesium-137, which have half-lives of about 30 years. The highest levels of caesium-137 are found in the surface layers of the soil where they are absorbed by plants, insects and mushrooms, entering the local food supply. HEALTH CONCERNS

32. What really happened – radioactive pollution • Changing wind patterns spread the radioactive cloud all over Europe • Scandinavia, the Baltic States, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and other regions were contaminated as well Source: UNESCEAR Report, New York 2000; Annex J. April 26th, 00.00 April 27th, 00.00 April 29th, 00.00 April 27th,12.00

33. Health effects of radioactivity Radioactive elements dispersed by Chernobyl Halftime: 8 days; stored in the thyriod gland, causes thyroid cancer Iodine 131 Halftime: 30 years; stored in all organs, causes cancer, enters the food chain Cesium 137 Halftime: 28 years; stored in teeth and bones, causes leukaemia Strontium 90 Halftime: 24.000 years;contaminates water reservoires, causes cancer Plutonium 239

34. THYROID CANCER • Some persons in the contaminated areas were exposed to large thyroid doses of up to 50 grays (Gy) because of an intake of radioactive iodine-131, a relatively short-lived isotope with a half-life of eight days, but which concentrates in the thyroid gland. This would have been absorbed from contaminated milk produced locally, particularly in children. Several studies have found that the incidence of thyroid cancer in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia has risen sharply

35. Health effects – Thyroid cancer Girl during an ultrasound examination (offered for free by German IPPNW doctor)

36. 1988 1994 1995 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 Health effects – Thyroid cancer 100 90 90 75 84 80 Children 79 82 70 Cases of thyroid cancer 66 62 60 66 58 Juveniles 54 51 50 43 40 36 34 28 26 30 23 19 18 20 17 13 6 10 3 6 2 2 3 2 3 816 785 702 627 539 510 545 491 Adults 393 Cases of thyroid cancer 295 259 210 213 189 122 122 155 127 132 131 136 139 148 97 101 1988 1982 1993 1994 1995 1976 1980 1981 1986 1987 1989 1991 1992 2001 1977 1978 1979 1983 1984 1985 1990 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Source: Otto Hug Strahleninstitut 2002

37. THYROID GLAND • Controls metabolism – appetite • Controls long and short-term memory • Controls heart rate • Controls digestion • Controls muscle movements • Aids in the nerve impulse process • Controls menstrual cycle

39. DEFORMATIES • In the wake of this worst environmental disaster ever recorded in human history, over 800,000 Byelorussian children (2.2 million total Byelorussia) have been exposed to various degrees of radiation poisoning. The radiation released after the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor's core was nearly 200 times that of the combined releases from the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Thousands of children have been permanently hospitalized and critically ill with severe Leukemia, hyper plasma of the thyroid, and other cancer sicknesses

47. These are burns and blood vessels growing Outside the body.

50. QUESTIONS? • Describe three of Russia’s environmental problems. • What are the effects of the environmental problems on Russia’s young people? • What are specific things the Russian people, the government, and Russian industry might do to clean up the environment? • What do you find most distressful about Russia’s environmental problems? What do you find most hopeful? This PowerPoint was created by: Jeremy Aston, Miss. Leslie Roach, And Mrs. Ruesing