Press Release, 24.10.2017

The Public Prosecutor’s Office of St. Petersburg has organised another inspection of the leakage of radioactive waste.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office of St. Petersburg has organised another inspection of the leakage of radioactive waste in the of the Radium Institute. The inspection was made on of the request of Mikhail Amosov, Yabloko’s MP in St. Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly. Experts from the Federal Medial and Biological Agency of Russia, which is independent from the Radium Institute, once again took soil and water samples from the territory of the Institute, but the results of the tests are still unknown.

Mikhail Amosov noted that he considered the decision of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to once again conduct a check of the Radium Institute the only right decision, as the information on a possible radioactive leak in the Institute worried St. Petersburg residents, and Amosov as an MP had been continuously receiving questions from voters about the situation in the Radium Institute.

“The results of a check conducted earlier by the Radium Institute specialists in the Institute’s laboratories raised doubts about the objectivity of the study. Independent expertise will be more trustworthy and remove many questions,” Amosov said.

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On 7 July, the Internet newspaper Fontanka published an investigation, according to which, in 2012, there was dehermetisation of the reservoir with radioactive waste of special canalization of the Radium Institute. According to the publication, in 2013 the expertise confirmed the presence of an increased radiation background in the soils surrounding the place of leakage, but despite this the Institute’s management began works on eliminating the leakage only in 2017.

On 12 July, Mikhail Amosov, deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, proposed to the Federal Environmental, Engineering and Nuclear Supervision Agency (Rostekhnadzor) to conduct an extraordinary inspection of the Radium Institute for the leakage of liquid radioactive waste.

Rostechnadzor’s reply stated that their check detected tenfold and fivefold excess of the permissible background radiation level at two control points on the territory of the Radium Institute. However, Mikhail Amosov noted that all measurements were made by specialists from the radiation control group of the Radium Institute, and soil analysis was carried out in the institute laboratory.

In August 2017, Mikhail Amosov appealed to Rostekhnadzor with a proposal to hold an inspection in the Radium Institute by means of laboratories not connected with the Radium Institute and the Rosatom corporation.

Rostechnadzor refused to conduct such an independent check, informing the MP that they did not have the appropriate authority. On 31 August, Mikhail Amosov asked an independent laboratory in the Environmental Public Prosecutor’s Office in St. Petersburg to conduct a check of the Radium Institute.