A Swiss company that focuses on sustainable technology for the environment has partnered up with a Ukranian state-owned business that is in charge of the power plant's environmental responsibilities - resulting in a 47 percent reduction in radiation levels in the air and soil in Chernobyl.
Exlterra (Excellence for Earth) and State Specialized Enterprise Ecocentre (SSE Ecocentre) have joined forces to implement the technology called Nucleus Separation Passive System (NSPS).
NSPS was tested at a 2.5-acre area (1 hectare) between November 2019 and September 2020, and at the end of this period, the radiation contamination levels in the soil have been decreased by 37 percent, and in the air by 47 percent, as per Interesting Engineering.
Now, the reduction in radiation to normal levels is possible in five years, as opposed to 24 thousand, which is pretty incredible.
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Sergiy Kireiev, General Director of SSE Ecocentre in Chernobyl, said: “These results are remarkable.
"It is the first time in 35 years that such technology has succeeded in reducing the level of radioactivity in the soil and air so significantly.
"This is real hope for the whole area, including the treatment of the sarcophagus."
“We are on track to reach our longer-term objective of returning the installed zone to baseline or natural levels five years after completion of the installation,” said Frank Muller, CEO of Exlterra.
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He added: “We will continue to offer our services to help the Chernobyl exclusion site, including the area around the Nr. 4 plant, and we also want to quickly offer our solution at other problematic sites around the world, including Fukushima in Japan.
"We can avoid the discharge of radioactive water into the oceans and thus prevent a new ecological catastrophe."
President and CTO of Exlterra Andrew Niemczyk said, “What seemed impossible is now a reality.
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"NSPS is an innovation that allows positrons to naturally accelerate in a passive system to remove contaminated areas.
"It harnesses renewable energy sources present in nature to considerably accelerate the natural decomposition process of contaminants in the soil.
"That's what makes this invention unique - it uses natural energies to solve industrial pollution without resorting to chemical substitutes or soil manipulations.
“We are only at the beginning of the virtuous application of such a technology.
"As with our other successfully commercialized technologies, we have demonstrated that we can use nature's resources to heal the wounds we inflict on it.
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"The common denominator of our technologies, installed underground, is the use of natural and renewable forces to achieve tangible results."
Featured Image Credit: AlamyTopics: Chernobyl