Short and wiry, gnarled face, he looked older than his 62 years. But Yuri Pirogov had a tale to tell. Determined, he took to the podium at the Concert Hall lecture theatre before an audience of nuclear experts.

Ten years ago he'd won the regional acting prize, and he proudly sported his badge of honour on his lapel. But this performance-at the international radioecological conference in Krasnoyarsk- was serious.

All his life, save some time as a military mercenary, Yuri had lived in the village of Atomanova-on the eastern banks of the mighty Yenisei River, at nearly 3.500km long, the greatest in Siberia. Now the fight was with the nuclear industry.

Atomanova is 5km downstream from a vast nuclear complex formerly called Krasnoyarsk-26, now called the Mining Chemical Combine (MCC) at Zhelenzngorsk-one of three Sellafield-type nuclear 'combines' in Russia.

Built in 1950, it houses a reprocessing plant, nuclear waste stores, a part-built Fast Breeder plutonium fuel reactor called RT-2, and a unique plutonium production reactor constructed entirely underground in a vast rock cavern to protect it against US nuclear attack in the Cold War.

Zhelenzngorsk is one of ten former ZATOs, or secret & closed military cities in Russia, now opened up.

Yuri Pirigov said before 1988 the villagers of Atomanova "did not even suspect that so close to their homes such a nuclear complex existed." But when they noticed large pipes being laid by the far bank of the Yenisei from their village, they enquiresd what was happening. Soon they discovered the pipes were for liquid nuclear waste disposal.

Officials from the MCC gave the villagers a briefing on radiation effects on humans. Curiosity-and no little fear aroused-the villagers put questions to the local administration, who knew little more than Yuri Pirigov and his neighbours.

Angered but undeterred, the villagers petitioned the Krasnoyarsk Krai-the regional territory government responsible for an area 10 times the size of Britain-forty miles upstream. But even the professors at the city's university were in the dark about the ZATO.

Yuri said that with the help of Vladimir Mikheev, director of the Krasnoyarsk Citizen Centre on Non Proliferation, the Atomanova villagers finallly discovered the pipes were for chanelling the nuclear waste deep underground.

In all the MCC complex planned to discharge over 25 million cubic metres of plutonium contaminated wastes deep intoo the bowels of the earth.

Yuri was later pestered by the MCC security police, and told "You are helping the damned Americans with your fuss." The future of his village was at stake. On the nearby bank of the Yenisei, young girls would swim in the unusually warm water. It became clear to the villagers the warmth had come from nuclear discharges at the MCC. As belated compensation, in 1996, Atomanova was offered 5 million roubles to improve the village infrastructure. Two ambulances were bought for 520,000 roubles, yet the village failed to benefit from electricity generated at the reactors across the river.

In support of Yuri Pirigov's claims, Dr Irina Osokina, chief of the Endocrinology Department at the Insititute for Medical Problems of the North in Krasnoyarsk, unveiled a new study demonstrating plutonium contamination in the area around the 'special protection zone' at the MCC was between 8 to 17 times the measurable plutonium from atmospheric weapons tests.

Radioactive contamination has been found as far as 1,400km downstream on the Yenisei, which pours nearly 20,000 cubic meters of water per second into the Arctic Ocean. Expeditions by the Siberian Institute of Biophysics have found 'hot' radioactive particles in may spots along the Yenisei riverbank, even at a forest campsite. The SIoB scientists estimate that the ill-fated campers would have got a year's radiation dose in just three hours-unknowingly-as they had fun in the forest.

The worst radioactive contamination has been found on the Gorodskoi island , near Atomanova, close to the radioactive effluent discharge pipe. Other surveys by the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have found contamination on the island and at the nearby downstream village of Bolshoi Balchung, up to one thousand times the caesiun-137 discharged in the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Hot particles have also been found in the Yenisei flood plain and at Yeniseik City, nearly 400km north of MCC.

At earlier hearings in Yekaterinburg (population:1.5million)in the Urals mountains, another former closed military industrial city, details were revealed of a covered-up accident at the BN-600 fast breeder reactor, only 35 miles from the Urals capital city. The accident-probably in 1996-involved a meltdown in the experimental plutonium 'Mox' fuel. At the same event, German Kukashin-a former senior nuclear fuel scientist at the 'Mayak' Chemical Combine nuclear complex-told of a serious accident at reasearch reactors at the State Scientific Centre Research Insititute of Atomic Reactors, at Dimitrovgrad, in the Ulyanovsk region east of Moscow. Dr Kukashin was later sacked for his attempts to publicise the accident risks.

The 'Mayak' complex-named after the Russian symbol for 'Beacon for the Future'-is one of the most polluted places on the planet. In 1957 a nuclear waste storage tank exploded, scattering highly toxic waste over the local villages. They were not evacuated for two weeks, despite the Soviet atomic authorities knowing people had to be moved within 36 hours to ensure protective measures might work. v The 'Mayak' ZATO - near Chelyabinsk (population 1.2 million)- has also discharged high level radioactive effluents directly into the local River Techa, and pumped plutonium wastes into the marshy Lake Karachay, making it the single most radioactive spot n earth, including Chernobyl.

One village has never been evacuated, despite being in the centre of the danger zone. The 4,500 people of Muslumova have stayed for decades because it is the local railway halt. Every summer children still flock to the village by rail to see their grandparents In Yekaterinburg, famous for being the site of the murder in 1919 of the last Tsar, Nicholas Romanov and his family, scientists revealed at the public hearings, that by the years 2020/2030 every second child born to parents in the Chelkyabinsk region will suffer 'severe genetic deficiences.' . A former local state Duma (parliament) member, Natalia Mironova and local Chelyabinsk lawyer, Anna Ilyina, told the Guardian that they were now pressing for proper compensation for families afflicted by the Mayak accidents.

Not to be outdone in atomic horror stories, scientists from Tomsk, close to the former ZATO city of Sversk (Tomsk-7) and 'science city' Novosibirsk-both in western Siberia-unveiled monitoring studies showing widespread radioactive pollution in both the large cities and their surroundings. In Novosibirsk, for instance, a uranium plant only three miles from the city centre is discharging effluent into a lake whose artificial dam is close to collapse.

All of this has come out when Russia's President Putin and US President Clinton on 4 June signed a deal that will involve countries of the G-8 top industrial nations funding a huge expansion of nuclear power in Russia, based on plutonium 'Mox' fuel .Russia wants to build 29 new reactors and consume 33,000 kilogrammes of former warhead plutonium in its controversial new atomic programme.

Next month in Okinawa in Japan, where the G-8 meet, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown will be pressed by the US and Russia to support Putin's plutonium plans with large amounts of British taxpayers' money. MPs have already registered objections in Parliament.

At the Krasnoyarsk conference, Nikolay Sergeev, deputy chief engineer at the nuclear reprocessing plant at the MCC at Zhelezngorsk, revealed plans by the plant to build more reprocessing facilities, plutonium fuel fabrication factories and another giant underground store for spent nuclear reactor fuel.

Challenged to say whether the public, including Atamonova villagers, would be given a say in these grandiose atomic plans, he said "we have much to do in this area. We have a big PR team."

And what if the people reject the new nuclear plans? Nikolay Sergeev was steadfast: "This noble cause will not be rejected by the public." At which Yuri Pirogov smiled wryly.

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