DUSHANBE, Tajikistan, July 26. Tajik authorities plan to start decontaminating radioactive waste sites in the north of the country by the end of this year, Kayumjon Mukhmudzoda, the mayor of Istiklol city in the Sughd region, announced at a press conference, Trend reports.
He said that the decontamination efforts will be carried out by the Russian company Rosatom. The initial focus will be on sites in Istiklol, Adrasmon, and the Bobojon-Gafurov district, where waste dumps containing millions of tons of radioactive material have accumulated.
One of the first sites to be decontaminated is the Taboshar-3 site, which spans 3 hectares and contains over one million tons of radioactive material, according to Mahmudzoda.
Following this, decontamination efforts will move to sites near the villages of Adrasmon and Dehmoy in the Bobojon-Gafurov district.
At the end of June, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a decree allocating 1.56 billion rubles ($18.3 million) for cleaning up uranium contamination in Tajikistan between 2025 and 2028.
Uranium was mined in Tajikistan during the Soviet era. After the USSR collapsed, uranium extraction and processing in the country ceased.
According to the National Concept of the Republic of Tajikistan for the Rehabilitation of Uranium Tailings for 2014–2024, the total amount of waste in the former uranium production tailings in the country, including off-balance ores, exceeds 55 million tons. The total radioactivity of the waste is estimated to be between 6.5 and 7.7 thousand curies.
The uranium deposit in Istiklol was one of the largest in the former Soviet Union. It was discovered in 1926, and uranium ore was actively mined there from 1944 to 1965.
