OREANDA-NEWS. June 11, 2009. During these days the delegation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) led by an expert for radioactive waste Jean-Louis Tison is visiting Ashgabat. The delegation includes Dr. Chris De Wispelaere, Director of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Program.

During the visit the NATO experts held a series of the meetings and talks at the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Nature Protection and Turkmenhimiya State Concern of Turkmenistan. The focus of the discussion was the priority trends and prospects for bilateral cooperation to achieve environmental security. In this context the sides discussed the issues concerning safety of radioactive waste transportation and storage. As a dynamically developing state Turkmenistan had to face the similar problems today, which inevitably accompanied rapid economic and industrial growth. Though our country had no industries that used radioactive substances equipment used in the country could contain radioactive elements.

As is known, the trends of Turkmenistan-NATO cooperation successfully developed in the framework of the NATO Programme Partnership for Peace include partnership aimed at protecting the environment and promoting people’s health. Several years ago under technical and consultative support of the NATO specialists – the experts from France the industrial enterprises in Turkmenistan received special equipment and Turkmen specialists were trained in France. This time the partners specified the major trends in partnership and reached the agreements on the assistance in radioactive waste control, monitoring and transportation in strict compliance with the environmental requirements.