a turnkey solution in radiation technologies, which includes the design and construction of the irradiation centres, equip- ment manufacturing and delivery, training of personnel, and commissioning of the facility. In 2016, Rosatom signed a bilateral agreement for coopera- tion in the development of a network of integrated infrastruc- ture irradiation centres with the Indian Agricultural Associa- tion, Hindustan Agro Co-Op Ltd. In total, at least seven centres were planned to be built. “The use of irradiation will make it possible to reduce grain losses from 15% to 3-5% per year,” Cherednichenko said after the signing ceremony. Ac- cording to Food Irradiation Global Market Outlook, nearly 1 million tonnes of food are sterilised with radiation globally. Sterilised foods are in high demand in hospitals, particularly for AIDS and chemotherapy patients. However, in most cases X-rays, not radioactive isotopes are used, which is believed to be less efficient. However, Rosatom has not reported on any significant progress on building foreign irradiation centres during the past few years. The nuclear corporation declined to comment on the current status of these projects.
Treatment may become mandatory Rosatom has always emphasised that it offered on the global market only the technologies that had been proved safe and effective in Russia. However, Russian environmentalists are pro- testing against the plans recently made to employ low dosage radioactive treatment of food and agricultural products. “In 2019, an irradiation centre was opened in the city Obninsk in Kaluga Oblast. There are plans to build three more irradiation centres [in Russia],” commented Albert Garapov, chairman of
the Antinuclear Society of Tatarstan, where the country’s first experiments involving using radiation for agricultural prod- ucts were carried out. “Moreover, the State Duma (the lower chamber of the Russian Parliament) registered the bill, which already passed the first reading, under which all products are proposed to be subjected to mandatory ion radiation treat- ment,” Garapov said. “Lobbyists for this radiation law swung at the monopoly so that there were practically no products that were not exposed to radiation. They just want to remove com- petitors, understanding perfectly well that more or less literate people will choose non-irradiated foods. The environmental community is, of course, against this,” he added.
Radiotoxins cause concerns According to environmentalists, the experiments of using ra- diation to treat agricultural products have already led to some bad things in the past. “After the collapse of the USSR, the United States had to finance projects designed to find and safely store sources of agricultural radiation in Georgia and Moldova,” commented Andrey Ozharovsky, a specialist at the Russian environmental non-governmental organization the Nuclear Waste Safety Programme. “Radiation treatment produces radiotoxins – substances formed in the irradiated organism that can lead to radiation injuries. As the experi- ments conducted in the USSR showed, the consumption of food products exposed to radiation leads to serious illness and affects many generations,” Garapov said.”There are risks of unexplored consequences, as substantial doses are needed to kill bacteria, and this can lead to undesirable changes in seeds and agricultural products,” Ozharovsky said.
▶ ALL ABOUT FEED | Volume 29, No. 3, 2021 21
Rosatom has 36 nuclear power plant units, at differ- ent stages of development, in 12 countries, excluding Russia.
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