A radioactive cloud, which has been detected across several parts of Europe, may be the result of a mystery nuclear accident somewhere in Russia.
Traces of the pollution were detected as far away as Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland, reports the Daily Mail.
The cloud was first noticed when France's nuclear safety institute, IRSN, picked up faint traces of ruthenium 106. This radioactive nuclide is produced when atoms are split in a nuclear reactor and does not occur naturally.
Credit: Blake Buckhart/Creative Commons
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A French official commented that the detection of this sort of pollution was 'absolutely not normal', but that there had been no impact on health or the environment.
IRSN ruled out an accident in a nuclear reactor, saying instead that it was likely to be a problem at a nuclear fuel treatment site or a centre for radioactive medicine.
"We observed only ruthenium, which indicates it couldn't come from a nuclear reactor as we would have seen other fission products, like Caesium,"b Jean-Christophe Gariel, director for health at the IRSN, told the Telegraph.
The institute also said that while it couldn't pinpoint the origin of the radioactive cloud, it was very likely to have come from somewhere south of the Ural Mountains, in either Russia or Kazakhstan.
At the source of the leak, the quantity of ruthenium 106 released was "major", said the IRSN, adding that if an accident of this scale had taken place in France there would have been evacuation or sheltering of people in a radius of "a few kilometres around the accident site".
Mr. Gariel said that no ruthenium 106 was detected in the UK.
Duncan Cox, leader of Public Health England's radiation emergency response group, confirmed, saying: "Radiation monitors at our sites in Oxfordshire and Glasgow have been checked since September when this substance was reported by other European radiation monitoring institutes, and we have not detected any unusual sources of radiation."
It was also speculated the detections could have been the result of a satellite equipped with a thermo-generator containing ruthenium that disintegrated in the atmosphere, but the IRSN no longer believe this to be the case, as no such satellite re-entered the Earth's atmosphere in this timeframe.
Russian authorities have commented, saying that to their knowledge there has been no such incident on their land.
"From their point of view, they said they had had no problems at all. Rosatom (the Russian nuclear operator) said it had detected nothing," explained Mr. Gariel.
Featured Image Credit: Andreas Krischer/Creative CommonsTopics: World News, Europe, Russia