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Russia to pay to Kazakhstan for damage caused by space rocket fall

Kazakhstan Materials 4 August 2006 11:47 (UTC +04:00)

(Kazinform) - Russia will pay compensation to Kazakhstan for damage caused by the crash of the space rocket Dnepr after a size of it is assessed, the deputy chief of the Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos), Viktor Ramishevsky, said.

We shall pay compensation for damage to ecology from the crash of the carrier rocket Dnepr by all means, as is stipulated by international norms and bilateral accords," he said.

Ramishevsky called "gag and an attempt to bring irritation into the relations with Kazakhstan" the reports by some of Russian mass media alleging that Russia would not pay for damage to soil and steppe vegetation caused by the fall of the Dnepr rocket, reports Trend.

There is no environmental disaster in the area of the fall, Ramishevsky said.

He said that "fuel components have not been found in water samples in the residential area Zhanakala, 35 kilometres south of which the carrier rocket fell".

"In the area of the explosion of the rocket and of dispersion of itsfragments, ground contamination above a maximum permissible level (MPL) has been revealed at a distance not more than 150 meters from the centre of a crater that formed as a result of the fall and explosion of the rocket. The concentration of rocket fuel in ground samples obtained from the crater is not above 228 MPL," Roskosmos said in an official release, KAZINFORM cites Itar-Tass.

Experts noted a "tendency of fuel concentration reduction in the crater, which is explained by good evaporability of heptil in a hot weather and its low resistance to solar radiation".

An air temperature in the Zhanala area is 35 decrees centigrade tehse days.

The 15 meter deep crater 50 meters in diameter indicates a great force of the explosion of fuel components, Roskosmos said.

It said that work would be continued in the coming days to fence contour off the crater, with the monitoring of soil contamination two meters beneath the deepest part of the crater.

Russian and Kazakh specialists are considering a technique of cleaning the heptil-contaminated soil using kerosene burnout or detoxification with special agents, Ramishevsky said.

The Dnepr rocket carrying 18 satellites crashed shortly after the launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome last Thursday.

According to Roskosmos, it had 86,430 kilogrammes of fuel, including 23,990 kilogrammes of toxic heptil and 62, 438 kilogrammes of an oxidiser, nitrogen tetroxide.

The rocket's fragments were found 35 kilometres from Zhanakaly in an area located 150 kilometres from Baikonur.

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