The outwardly prosperous Vasileostrovsky district frightens residents with an abundance of garbage piles, where squares and parks should be instead. Adding fuel to the fire is the territory on the Skipper's Strait, which has repeatedly been the subject of scandalous publications about elevated radioactive levels.
During the creation and testing of experimental samples, several areas of the region became contaminated with various radionuclides, including sites on the Skipper's Strait of Vasilievsky Island, at the Navy test base in the settlement of Pesochny in the Vyborg district of the Leningrad region, and on the islands of Konevets, Kheinyasenmaa, and Myukerikkyu in Lake Ladoga. On the territory of military town No. 6 at the address: Skipper's Strait 16, weapons of mass destruction were developed using highly active aerosols. These contained strontium-90, cesium-137, and cobalt-60. They were tested in laboratory conditions on animals, and the waste from these experiments was buried directly on the military unit's territory. Here, the damaging capabilities of these aerosols were studied.
On the territory of the Navy's Research Chemical Institute on the Skipper's Strait of Vasilievsky Island, where chemical weapons were developed, a top-secret nuclear research institution called the "Fifteenth Directorate" began its work. Simultaneously, on the same military unit's territory, the "First Directorate" started operating, staffed by medical personnel studying a wide range of radiation effects of BRV (combat radioactive substances) on humans. Dogs, rabbits, rats, and mice were used as test subjects.
Both directorates were established by the decision of the Special Committee, which oversaw the USSR Atomic Project. The Special Committee was headed by the all-powerful Lavrentiy Beria. The Special Committee had information that the Americans were already working on creating radiological weapons, and the USSR urgently began its own developments.
Leningrad was chosen because it housed the Radium Institute—the main scientific developer of the new weapons. Also, the Research Chemical Institute on the Skipper's Strait, which originated on the site of a laboratory where D. I. Mendeleev worked on technologies for creating smokeless pyrocotton powder. In 1957, all work with BRV was halted.
Experts reported that on this territory there was a special sewage system where radioactive waste was discharged. Over time, it deteriorated, and the waste began to seep into the soil and, along with groundwater, contaminated the entire military unit area, as well as part of the territory beyond its borders toward the Gulf of Finland, where a special communications house stands. Most likely, the radioactive spot moved toward the Gulf of Finland, to the water's edge where the special sewage system discharged.
By the late 1970s, the military left the territory on the Skipper's Strait where they worked on BRV. But since the test site was located in the center of a multi-million city, the area was periodically inspected. And the results were not encouraging. The radioactive spot spread with the groundwater. The effectively abandoned military town became a radioactive dump, nicknamed the "bad place." Both the city authorities and the military understood that urgent decontamination was required.
The situation moved forward thanks to the efforts of the St. Petersburg Committee for Environmental Management. In 2006, committee specialists secured funding from the city's environmental fund for the first stage of decontamination: at that time, the above-ground parts of the most contaminated buildings were dismantled and decontaminated, and their foundations were conserved.
The official response from the administration: "Since 2010, decontamination of all 23 radioactive contamination sites at the facility has been completed. Due to the discovery of a new contamination site during decontamination work in 2011, additional decontamination was carried out in 2012. Currently, the radiation background across the entire facility does not exceed permissible levels... All radioactive waste has been removed from the facility. In 2012, 23.7 cubic meters of solid radioactive waste were transported to FSUE 'RosRAO'."
Sources:
https://bellona.ru/2013/11/19/s-gryaznoj-bomboj-leningrada-pokonch/
https://www.dp.ru/a/2010/02/16/V_Peterburge_likvidirujut
