Russia fury: Moscow denies its nuclear plants are source of radiation leak
RUSSIA has denied that a leak of nuclear material being detected over Scandinavia didn't come from one of their power plants.
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Finland, Norway and Sweden’s nuclear safety watchdogs said last week they had found higher-than-usual amounts of radioactive isotopes in the atmosphere. A public health body from the Netherlands said that from analysing the data, they believed the material came from the direction of Western Russia. It’s believed that the material could insinuate damage to a fuel element.
Both the Leningrad and Kola Nuclear Power plant was working normally and had no leaks according to Russia’s nuclear energy body.
"There have been no complaints about the equipment's work," a spokesperson for the state-controlled nuclear power operator Rosenergoatom told Tass news agency.
"Aggregated emissions of all specified isotopes in the above-mentioned period did not exceed the reference numbers."
Radiation levels around the two powers stations "have remained unchanged in June", the spokesperson added.
The Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), Lassina Zebro, tweeted on Friday: that its Stockholm monitoring station had detected three isotopes.
Cs-134, Cs-137 and Ru-103 - at higher than usual levels but not harmful to human health.
It’s reported that the particles were detected on 22-23 June.
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The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands say that the composition of the nuclear material "may indicate damage to a fuel element in a nuclear power plant".
The UN’s nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency, made it clear on Saturday that it was aware of reports and sought more information from member states.
This isn’t the first time Scandinavian countries have spotted radiations leaks coming from Russia.
Last year, Norway found a radiation level 800,000 times higher than normal at the wreck of a Russian navy submarine.
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The Komsomolets sank in the Norwegian Sea in 1989 after a fire on board killed 42 sailors.
A sample showed radioactive caesium leaking from a ventilation pipe, but researchers said it was "not alarming", as the Arctic water quickly diluted it.
The Soviet-era sub is also deep down, at 1,680m (5,512ft), and there are few fish in the area, they added.
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In 2013, it was unveiled that the Soviet military dumped many tonnes of radioactive hardware at sea.
It was thought that for more than a decade, Western governments had been helping Russia to remove nuclear fuel from decommissioned submarines docked in the Kola Peninsula.
A region closest to Scandinavia.
Soon after plans were put in place to survey numerous other dumps in the Kara sea.
