Panic of increased radiation background in Belarus push by schoolchildren? (Video)

Rumours about accident at a nuclear power plant and increased radiation background in Minsk has been circulating among the city dwellers for the third day.

– You are a two hundredth person who asks me about it! – exclaims Ihar Alsheuski, chairman of the Radiation Hygiene department at the Minsk City Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology. He takes a two-and-a-half-thousand-dollars dosimeter with his and we go out.

The device shows 9.5 µR/h at the door of the city Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology.

– Maximum allowable norm in the street is 20 µR/h, in dwelling houses – up to 40, – Alsheuski comments. We are going to the National Academy of Sciences.

– I‘ve recently flown to Moscow, and took a dosimeter with me, – Mr Ihar told by the way. – The device showed 180 at height of 10 thousand meter!

The radiation background near the Academy of Sciences is only 8.5. We are moving to Yakub Kolas Square – 7.7 µR/h.

– Such measurements are carried out every day! – Ihar Alsheuski says turning off the dosimeter. – In general, I think it is good that people worry about the radiation. The main thing is that alarm will always be false...

How did rumours about accident on a nuclear power plant appeared?

– The Emergency Situations Ministry (ESM) of the Pershamaiski district of Minsk is conducting a scheduled complex exercise these days. It should be conducted every five years, – says Alyaksei ZADZYAREI, deputy chairman of the propaganda center at the ESM city department. – Among other situations, a radiation discharge on Ignalina nuclear power plant was simulated in a school and a kindergarten. The teachers and administration were to practice response actions in case of such emergency situation. As it was real-life exercise, children began to speak about “explosion on a Lithuanian nuclear plant”!..

Why Minsk dwellers were not warned of the exercises?

They were. The information was available on the site of the Minsk city executive committee and transmitted in news blocs over the radio. But it didn’t help. Then the Emergency Situations Ministry addressed to FM stations asking to give information about a false alarm at least 5 times a day in news blocs. In order everyone can know it.

WELL SAID!

“On unknown reason, speaking about potential danger of nuclear power plants, we forgot about other hazardous industries... All our cold storage facilities are ammonia-operated... In summer of 1986 we felt ammonia odour when passing by Kalinkavichy town. As it was found out it was an ammonia pipeline break. It was eliminated in time, but if an ammonia cloud would have reached Kalinkavichy – it had caused more victims than Charnobyl accident.”

(Yakau KENIGSBERG, head of the National Commission on Radiological Defence at the Council of Ministers, interview to Interfax).