Political scientist: Radioactive waste turned into trade item for Armenia

Trade in radioactive substances, resources that have been produced over the years at the Metsamor nuclear power plant is a common thing for the Armenian criminals. These criminals, in fact, during the years of independence and especially after first President Levon Petrosyan left his office, merged with the new authorities, more precisely, with the military junta headed by Robert Kocharyan, and then with Serzh Sargsyan, Azerbaijani political scientist Tofig Abbasov told Report.

On April 16, officers of the State Security Service of Georgia detained two people in Kutaisi for attempting to illegally sell the radioactive substance Americium-241. This is not the first such incident in the past few years.

Earlier, a citizen of Armenia Militos M. was detained by officers of the State Security Service of Georgia while trying to smuggle a radioactive substance Thorium through Georgia to Russia. In April 2016, six people were detained in Tbilisi while trying to sell the radioactive substance Uranium-238.

“As the economic freedoms narrowed around the occupying country Armenia, shadow operations began to flourish there, and oddly enough, radioactive waste also turned into a trade item for the ruling circles of this republic,” Abbasov said, noting that Azerbaijan, of course, had information that the occupied territories were turned by the occupier into a “large black market zone,” where the trade in drugs and prohibited types of weapons was gaining momentum. “Nuclear waste was also on the list of these materials, which the Armenian Republic, which was experiencing great difficulties due to economic asphyxia, was already forced to trade.”

In this case, great responsibility fell on both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Russian state corporation Rosatom, which was kind of a progenitor of this atomic facility, the political scientist added.

“Trusting a country like Armenia, which is pursuing a very dangerous and irresponsible policy, the fate of such a serious object as a nuclear power plant, is in itself unacceptable. Therefore, if we recall the events of April 2016, the Armenian military didn’t expect that the Azerbaijani the army is no longer the same, which at the beginning of the 90s could barely cope with the onslaught of the international terrorism and the newly created Armenian army.

“As I remember it, one of the first prime ministers of Armenia, Hrant Bagratyan, already as an MP in 2016, raised the issue of using a ‘dirty bomb’ against Azerbaijan. This also had its own paradoxical essence, because the Armenians always said that they won the four-day war in 2016, and on the other hand, the question of using the ‘dirty atomic bomb’ was raised in parliament. This is another evidence that such an irresponsible country cannot be trusted with such serious objects, because at any moment they can take dangerous actions out of insanity, and neighboring states may suffer from this,” Abbasov said.

The political scientist stressed that in this process all neighboring states - Georgia, Iran, Turkey and the Russian Federation should work together to clarify the fate of the Metsamor nuclear power plant: “In the sense that it should finish its operation and thereby create more or less predictable prerequisites for the future, because otherwise, when there is a network of traders in radioactive elements, waste, this creates great risks for all people living in our region and, in general, turns such a serious motive as the peaceful use of atomic energy into a global headache.”