[Search for users] [Overall Top Noters] [List of all Conferences] [Download this site]

Conference turris::scandia

Title:	All about Scandinavia

Moderator:	TLE::SAVAGE

Created:	Wed Dec 11 1985
Last Modified:	Tue Jun 03 1997
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	603
Total number of notes:	4325

111.0. "Finland-Radioactivity" by HELIX::NIEMI () Tue Jun 10 1986 11:45

Associated Press Tue 10-JUN-1986 09:40       Finland-Radioactivity

   HELSINKI, Finland (AP) - A monitoring station on Finland's
southern coast near the Soviet Union detected radiation levels
higher than any registered in Finland after the Chernobyl nuclear
accident, officials said today.
   Officials said they did not know the cause, but ruled out faulty
instruments.
   Readings of 1.8 millirontgens per hour were taken Monday at a
monitoring station in Kotka, a city about 120 miles west from the
Soviet city of Leningrad and 60 miles north of Soviet Estonia.
   The levels declined to 0.03 milliroentgen, or near normal, by
this afternoon, said Esko Koskinen, an Interior Ministry official.
   A milliroentgen is one-thousandth of a roentgen, the standard
measure of ionizing radiation. Experts say exposure to 50 roentgens
or more per year is dangerous and 400 roentgens per year can be
fatal.
   Leif Moberg, head of Sweden's Radiation Institute, said two
other Finnish monitoring stations near Kotka also registered higher
than normal readings, but not as high as in Kotka.
   Finland's Lovisa nuclear power station, just to the west of
Kotka, reported no abnormal readings, officials said. Moberg said
monitoring stations in neighboring Sweden also did not detect
unusual levels of radiation.
   ``We don't know where the cloud came from, where it went or what
could be the reason,'' Moberg.
   ``It was not a meter fault,'' Koskinen said in a telephone
interview.
   Finnish officials said aircraft were trying to find the source
of the radiation which was detected Monday night when winds were
blowing onto the Finnish coast from the Soviet Union.
   Finns were advised that they did not have to take precautions.
Koskinen said it would be several days before officials could
determine the extent of the contamination, if any, to crops in the
region.
   Antti Vuorinen, head of Finland's Bureau of Nuclear Radiation
Safety, said authorities had not contacted the Soviet government
``because we don't have a system for this sort of immediate contact
with them.
   ``Since it is a short peak which came and went it is difficult
to establish where it came from,'' he said.
   Following the reports of high radiation levels, Finnish
officials asked Sweden to check its nuclear power plants. Forsmark,
the Swedish plant that alerted the West to radiation from the April
26 Chernobyl accident, reported nothing unusual, officials said.

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
111.1	Added reference to Chernobyl incident	TLE::SAVAGE	Neil, @Spit Brook	`Tue Jun 10 1986 15:41`	3
	After the Chernobyl nuclear accident, radiation levels in Finland reached 0.45 milliroentgens.
111.2	Faulty Instruments To Blame?	HELIX::NIEMI		`Wed Jun 11 1986 09:40`	61
	Associated Press Wed 11-JUN-1986 07:49 Finland-Radiation Finns Say Instruments Probably to Blame For Radiation Peak By RISTO MAENPAA HELSINKI, Finland (AP) - Finland's Bureau of Nuclear Radiation Safety today said faulty instruments probably were responsible for a mysteriously high radiation reading at a coastal monitoring station near the Soviet Union. ``The most likely explanation for the peak measurements at Kotka is at the moment a fault in the measuring devices,'' a five-paragraph government statement said. On Tuesday, officials said the measuring instruments were not to blame for Monday's six hours of unusually high recordings of radioacitivity. For 10 seconds the readings were even higher than those recorded after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Soviet Ukraine. ``The other slight increases detected in the Kotka area on June 9 may have been caused by local weather conditions and changes in normal background radiation,'' it said. ``If later analysis gives cause, the Bureau of Nuclear Radiation Safety will advise about the situation immediately,'' it said. The monitoring station at Kotka is on Finland's southeastern coast only about 60 miles from the coast of Soviet Estonia. A 10-second peak Monday night showed a reading of 1.8 milliroentgen per hour, four times greater than any recorded in Finland after the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident. Other stations near Kotka also recorded higher levels of radiation but none as high as the reading at Kotka. The mysterious reading touched off alerts at nuclear power stations in both Finland and Sweden, where checks showed only normal levels of radiation. No public safety warnings were issued. Finnish officials said Tuesday that radiation would have had to be more than 10 times higher than that indicated by the Kotka peak reading before public precautions were called for. Monitoring stations in neighboring Sweden reported no unusual readings during the Finnish incident and officials in Stockholm today indicated support for the Helsinki explanation. ``We have good relations with the radiation authorities in Finland and believe what they say'' said Hans Edvall, a department head at Sweden's National Radiation Protection Institute. Edvall said in a telephone interview that weather factors such as rains, bringing lingering airborne radiation down to the ground, had at times caused changes in background radiation in Sweden as well. The Finnish statement said military aircraft sent up after the reading had collected four air dust samples Tuesday and that inspection of the samples showed no radioactive elements that were not already there from the Chernobyl accident. It said a measuring vehicle was at work in eastern Finland, close to the Soviet border, and it too had not found anything new in air or ground checks. The Kotka readings had dropped back to 0.03 milliroentgen, which officials said was close to normal, less than 24 hours after the sudden peak. Finland and Sweden were the first two western countries to report the discovery of radioactivity that the Soviet Union later said was a result of the April 26 accident at Chernobyl. Finnish officials were widely criticized in both Finland and Sweden for not being more forthcoming in their information about the Chernobyl radiation. Finland, however, has an especially sensitive political relationship with the neighboring Soviet Union.