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Cars come into eastern ports by ferry. But by the time they reach Central Asia, it's more difficult to detect them.
A total of 70 used cars imported from Japan and found to have increased levels of radiation are being stored in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and cannot be sent back, according to Silk Road Reporters citing local news outlets. Car retailers in Kyrgyzstan, who have been importing significant numbers of used cars from Japan for resale in the country, have been finding cars that exhibit levels of radiation above normal. Several batches of cars have been seized by the government during the last three years and have at times been sent back to Japan through an agreement with the Japanese government. However, irradiated cars keep turning up in Bishkek, the capital, and not all of them are being detected in a timely manner.
"These cars cannot be dispatched back. Neither China nor Japan will accept them. For this reason, we have to keep them here and deal with their further disposal," Tolo Isakov, director of the Disease Prevention Department in Bishkek, told the AKIpress news outlet, according to Silk Road Reporters.
Isakov told AKIpress and Novosti.kg, another Bishkek-based news outlet, that currently a decision is being made whether to scrap the cars. The cars have been quarantined in an impound lot, but the local authorities do not know what to do with them. The batch of (so far) 70 cars has been building up in the impound lot over time, with cars having come through several other countries. Isakov did not mention the levels of radioactivity that have been detected in these cars, though it is expected to vary from car to car.
The import of used Japanese cars is big business in Central Asia, especially in Mongolia and the Russian far-east regions that are the largest consumers of used Japanese cars in the area. In cities like Vladivostok, Russia, RHD Japanese cars make up roughly 50 percent of all registered passenger cars.
A shipment of 132 irradiated cars was recently detected coming into the port of Vladivostok in January 2014, with the cars having been barred from entry in port, according to the Australian website CarsGuide. Russia has been more successful at detecting irradiated cars coming in from Japan due to stringent checks in the ports of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. However, that is mainly due to the direct route that cargo ships with used cars normally take, in addition to systematic screenings by customs officials. The routes that used Japanese cars usually take to small Central Asian countries like Kyrgyzstan are more circuitous, and cars with radiation levels above normal frequently escape detection as they are driven across the border on license plates from neighboring countries.
Jay Ramey - Jay Ramey is an Associate Editor with Autoweek
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