Russia denies nuclear radiation emergency
In this file photo, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov smiles before the Victory Day Parade in Red Square in Moscow, Russia, on June 24, 2020.
Russia said on Monday it had detected no sign of a radiation emergency, after an international body reported last week that sensors in Stockholm had picked up tiny amounts of unusual radioactive isotopes produced by nuclear fission.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which monitors the world for evidence of nuclear weapons tests, said last week one of its stations scanning the air for radioactive particles had found unusual, although harmless, levels of caesium-134, caesium-137 and ruthenium-103.
The isotopes were “certainly nuclear fission products, most likely from a civil source,” it said. It tweeted a map showing where the material was likely to have originated, which included parts of several Baltic and Scandinavian countries as well as a swathe of western Russia.
Asked on Monday about reports that Russia could have been the source of a leak, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We have an absolutely advanced radiation level safety monitoring system and there are no any emergency alarms.”
“We do not know the source of this information.”
