The yoghurts are being touted by their makers as a health food. And although
Western microbiologists see no particular reason why bacterial cultures taken
from astronauts should be any healthier than standard cultures, the space
connection certainly provides a unique selling point.

For the past 25 years, microbiologists at the Institute of Biomedical
Problems in Moscow, working in a small lab at the Baikonur launch site in
Kazakhstan, have been culturing strains of bacteria from astronauts and using
them to make yoghurt.

The stresses of space flight can upset astronauts’ immunity, allowing
potentially dangerous bacteria to oust benign inhabitants of astronauts’ guts,
such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. In the early 1980s,
microbiologists attached to the Soviet space programme began developing the
yoghurts as a remedy to these problems, giving them to astronauts as they
prepared for space flights. The yoghurts were also sent into space to help
control urinary tract infections that occurred on the Mir space station in 1989
and 1995.

Nadezhda Lizko, who led the yoghurt project, says that most Soviet and
Russian astronauts have contributed to the biomedical institute’s bank of
cultures. “They are big fans of our yoghurt,” she says.

In the harsh financial reality of today’s Russia, however, the yoghurts have
become more than a natural remedy for sickly astronauts—they are now a
potential money-spinner for the biomedical institute. Lizko and her team have
diversified their range of products to include fruit-flavoured yoghurts, cottage
cheese and traditional Russian cheeses studded with garlic and herbs. From the
autumn, the researchers hope to produce 2 tonnes of dairy products a day at a
lab in the Kaluga region, north of Moscow. Although samples haven’t been
collected since 1993, Lizko has 1000 cultures of astronaut’s gut
bacteria—enough to sustain the business indefinitely.

She claims that astronauts make ideal culture donors for live yoghurts. “They
are under constant and strict observation of a whole range of medical
specialists,” Lizko says. “The slightest change in their physical condition is
instantly noticed. We only collect cultures that are proven able to withstand
extreme conditions.”

Michael Pariza, a microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison,
agrees that astronauts are in exemplary physical condition. However, he says
there’s no evidence that their cultures would produce a healthier yoghurt.

Because of safety concerns, Russia’s nuclear laws restrict it to storing and
treating waste from the former Soviet states or from countries such as Bulgaria
and Hungary with whom it has contracts dating back to the Soviet era. The new
amendment, drawn up by the atomic energy ministry, would allow spent fuel from
anywhere to be stored for long periods before being returned to its country of
origin, according to Vladislav Petrov, spokesman for the atomic energy
ministry.

But the 1986 Chernobyl disaster is still fresh in Russian minds and any
amendments to the law that would lead to the handling and transportation of more
nuclear material are likely to be fiercely opposed. A national opinion poll
carried out by a presidential commission in December found that 33 per cent of
Russians believe that the government is failing to protect them from dangerous
pollutants such as radioactive waste.

Atomic energy minister Yevgeny Adamov claims that any profits from the
reprocessing and storage of foreign waste would go towards tackling pollution
and improving safety at nuclear plants. At a recent meeting with
environmentalists, Adamov was quoted as saying that he would be setting the
price for foreign reprocessing at $1000 per kilogram, excluding
transportation. This is significantly less than that charged by French and
British firms.

However, environmentalists are sceptical of his claims that the money will be
used to fight pollution. They say any profits are more likely to go towards
expanding Russia’s reprocessing capabilities, such as completing the RT-2
reprocessing plant in the city of Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. Work on the plant,
which would treat waste from VVER-1000 light water reactors, has been suspended
since 1989 due to lack of funds.

There are also concerns that accepting foreign waste will only add to the
backlog of untreated material that has built up at Russia’s reprocessing plants.
At Krasnoyarsk, for example, 3400 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from VVER-1000
reactors are stored in water reservoirs. Vitaly Kizhnyak, an activist based in
Krasnoyarsk, describes the ministry’s plans to change the law to allow the
import of foreign waste as “an ecological crime”. Adamov is already struggling
to convince the governor of Krasnoyarsk, Alexandr Lebed, to continue accepting
waste shipments from Ukraine. Lebed claims that at $258 per kilogram,
Ukraine is paying too little for reprocessing.

The atomic energy ministry denies that there are plans to use foreign income
to complete the RT-2, and says opposing the new law would ensure that Russia
remains an “atomic dump”. Without the income from foreign contracts, there will
be no money to clean up the country’s nuclear pollution. Russia, he maintains,
should not miss the opportunity to compete for reprocessing contracts on the
world market.

“This will be a revolution in the science of biodegradation,” says Vyacheslav
Ilyin, project director and head of the microbial ecology laboratory at the
Russian State Research Centre’s Institute for Biological and Medical Problems in
Moscow.

The disposal unit will be able to process plastic, cellulose and other
organic waste aboard a spacecraft. “Cosmonauts identify waste as one of the most
acute problems they encounter in space,” says Ilyin. Each astronaut produces an
average of 2.5 kilograms—or up to 9 litres—of uncompressed waste a
day. To keep waste to a minimum, they are forced to wear underwear for up to a
week at a time. Onboard laundry facilities are rare in space, although the
Russian space station Mir does contain a shower.

Aboard Mir, waste is stored in sealed containers until a Progress supply
module arrives with fresh supplies. Waste is then transferred to the module,
which burns up and disintegrates as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere. But
Progress modules only call about twice a year. Meanwhile, stored waste builds up
on the station, taking up valuable space and posing a potential health threat to
crew.

The search for the most suitable combination of microbes is expected to take
up to a decade. Many of the strains are stored in national and international
collections. The researchers aim to have the complete microbial disposal unit
ready by 2017, when Russia hopes to launch its first crewed interplanetary
mission, possibly to Mars.

Nikitin was arrested in February 1996 by the Federal Security Service (FSB),
the successor to the Soviet KGB. He was charged with spying and revealing state
secrets because of his contribution to a report on radioactive pollution by
Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group.

Last week, presiding judge Sergei Golets ruled after a week-long trial that
there was insufficient evidence for a conviction. He ordered the FSB to supply
the court with more specific evidence. “This is a total defeat for the FSB,”
claims Yuri Schmidt, who headed Nikitin’s legal team.

Nikitin, who still cannot leave St Petersburg, had been hoping for an
acquittal. But under laws that date from the Soviet era, this requires a
presiding judge to write a detailed rebuttal of the prosecution’s case. Golets
had little option but to send the case back to the FSB for further evidence.

Although some of Nikitin’s supporters believe the case will not come back for
retrial, others are more cautious. “This is not an acquittal. The investigation
will continue,” says Diederik Lohman, director of the Moscow office of Human
Rights Watch.

However, Nils Bøhmer of Bellona predicts that the judge’s action may
encourage others to release environmental data. “Any pollution related to
activities of the military, whether chemical or radioactive, was covered under
this law on espionage,” Bøhmer says. “�Ӱ�ԭ��s at a meeting on marine
pollution in St Petersburg last April told me they had data on radioactive
pollution they were scared to publish. They were afraid they’d be the next
�����쾱�پ���.”

Environmentalists measuring radioactive contamination near the military
reprocessing plant at Mayak in the Urals have been threatened with similar
charges, while Grigory Pasko, a journalist in the far eastern port of
Vladivostok, was imprisoned in November 1997, accused of spying. In the past,
Pasko shot footage of the Russian navy dumping nuclear waste into the Sea of
Japan that was broadcast on Japanese television.

Pasko’s lawyer, Karen Nersisyan, is taking heart from last week’s
developments. “When a judge asks for further investigation, it is the death of
the case,” she says.

However, Lohman thinks the Nikitin case may continue to stifle researchers
holding onto sensitive data. “Russians without the backing of a Western group
like Bellona know they could never fight such charges themselves,” he says.

Bellona now plans to challenge Nikitin’s city arrest by taking his case to
the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

WESTERN efforts to find out about nuclear pollution in the Russian Arctic have been set back with the adoption of a new regulation that limits access to information about many nuclear sites.

The measure—a set of amendments to the 1993 State Secrets law—says that any nuclear installation significant to Russia’s defence should be classified. It has been signed by President Boris Yeltsin. Western officials and environmentalists, whose attempts to gain access to information about nuclear pollution in Russia are routinely fraught with bureaucratic hurdles, fear their job will now be even harder.

“Even nuclear power installations could be considered strategic objects in the case of a war,” says Igor Kudrik of the Oslo-based environmental group Bellona. Øyvind Nordsletten of the Norwegian prime minister’s office says: “Anything that disrupts moves to deal with nuclear waste is a sad development.”

The law is widely considered to be a response to the case of Aleksandr Nikitin, the former Russian navy officer who was arrested in February 1996 and charged with treason after co-writing a detailed report about pollution from the Russian Northern Fleet.

Vladimir Lopatin, an independent member of the Russian parliament who sat on the committee that worked on the amendments, insists that they will not restrict information about radioactive waste.