Radiation leak in Russian border city ‘under control’

A city in the Russian far east near the border with China says radiation levels have returned to normal after a 1,600-fold localised spike prompted a state of emergency last week.

The radiation was found to have been caused by parts from a mobile repair and chemical workshop, Russian state news agency Tass reported, citing authorities in Khabarovsk.

The city of 640,000 people lies 30km from northernmost Heilongjiang province.

The increased radiation levels were detected near a power pylon about 2.5km from residential buildings, Tass said in its report.

“An increase in natural background radiation was registered in the area of Suvorova and Sidorenko streets in Khabarovsk last week. Outside the epicentre, the radiation level was normal,” it said.

Local authorities contacted by phone yesterday said the issue had been resolved.

According to The Moscow Times, a resident alerted emergency services after discovering radiation levels had jumped sharply near a metal depot in the city’s industrial district. Authorities declared a state of emergency in the area on Saturday and cordoned off an area of 9,700 sq ft, the paper reported.

It said the radioactive object was found to be a capsule from a flaw detector, which was properly disposed of by a company dealing in nuclear waste.

The Novaya Gazeta newspaper said volunteers from a radiation control group had detected a peak radioactivity level at the site of 800 microsieverts, a unit for the dose of radiation that poses a health risk to humans.

A level of 0.5 microsieverts per hour is considered safe for the general public, the group was quoted as saying by the paper, which meant the level detected was 1,600 times higher.

A member of staff at the Chinese embassy in Khabarovsk told mainland media outlet Dingduan News that the radiation sources were under control and no large-scale pollution had been caused.

Users on Chinese social media platform Weibo commented on the incident.

“It turns out that dangers are very close to us,” one said, citing a storage facility not far from Khabarovsk for solid household radioactive waste from all of Russia’s far east.

“If a nuclear radiation leak occurs in the area, can the [Chinese] northeastern region remain intact?”