Radioactive Waste Explodes in Siberia

A tank of radioactive waste exploded and burned Tuesday at a weapons plant in the Siberian city of Tomsk-7, contaminating 2,500 acres and exposing firefighters to dangerous levels of radiation, Russian officials said.

It was unclear how much radiation was released in the accident or how many people might be affected.

However, Roland Finston, a health physicist at Stanford University, said the doses reportedly received by the firefighters would not make them sick and the levels reported around the site would cause cancer only if someone stayed for several days.

The Interfax news agency reported that about 2,500 acres were contaminated with radiation from the explosion. It said the wind was carrying the radiation toward unpopulated areas.

Tomsk-7 is believed to be about 12 miles outside Tomsk, a city of 500,000 people about 1,700 miles east of Moscow. But because Tomsk-7 is secret, it does not appear on ordinary maps.

No efforts to evacuate the region were reported.

The accident was one of a series reported in the former Soviet Union since a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded in 1986, spewing radiation across Europe.