No radioactive cloud spotted in Belarus - Radiation Monitoring Center

Belarus' Radiation Monitoring Center spotted in later September - early October 2017 air contamination with radioactive isotope Ru-106.

"We identified Ru-106 in Belarus - a very insignificant amount in Pinsk and Braslau. After reports on this leak appeared in the foreign press, we have been working on a higher alert and checking everything thoroughly and timely," the spokesperson of the National Center for Hydrometeorology, Environment Monitoring and Radioactive Contamination Controls Volha Bandarenka told Euroradio.

The first deputy head of the same center Maryia Hiermyanchuk told Euroradop: "From 3 through 5 October, we spotted a very insignificant amount of Ru-106 in the air. This contamination poses no threat to our population."

On 8 November, Germany's Federal Radioactive Defense Protection Agency stated it spotted an outburst of radioactive isotope Ru-106 in the south of Urals. The agency did not rule out the leak could take place another region of Russia's south. On 9 November. French radioation monitoring authorities said they spotted a radioactive cloud over Europe. Experts explained this could be linked with a radioactive leak at a nuclear facility in Russia or Kazakhstan in late September.

Initially, Russia denied everything. But on 20 November, Russia's Federal Hydrometeorology Service published a bulletin on the radioactive situation on the territory of Russia in September 2017. The bulletin pointed to the presence of Ru-106 in the samples taken in the last week of September in the Chelyabinsk region, some 100 km off the Mayak enterpirse. Radiation levels were 986 times higher than in the previous month near the settlement of Argayash. In the neighboring settlement of Navogorny, the level was 440 times higher. It was described as "extreme air contamination". The bulletin also described air contamination in Tatarstan and Rostov-na-Don as "high."

The cause of the leak is yet to be determined. It is noted that concentration of Ru-106 was significantly lower than allowed and posed no threat to the population.