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Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
               In November of 2017, Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear corporation issued a statement that read, “The recent release of ruthenium-106 that has been detected across Europe did not come from a Rosatom facility. All Rosatom nuclear facilities, including nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel reprocessing sites, are operating safely and normally. There were no incidents at any of these sites during the period of September-October 2017.”
       Rosatom issued another statement on the Ru-106 release today. The statement read, “We maintain that there have been no reportable events at any Rosatom-operated plants or facilities. Both the national regulator and experts from an independent international inquiry inspected the Mayak facility back in 2017 and found nothing to suggest that the ruthenium-106 isotope originated from this site, nor found any traces of an alleged accident, nor found any evidence of local staff exposure to elevated levels of radioactivity.”
"The recent PNAS report does not contain any new data or facts that differ from the data previously used by the national regulator and the independent international inquiry which reviewed all the scenarios, including that of an alleged accidental leak on the Mayak facility.
"The independent international inquiry has found the accidental release scenario to be inconsistent with the established facts.
"Had an accidental release of the alleged magnitude (250 TBq at once, as suggested in the PNAS report) taken place, the facility's automated control and monitoring systems would have recorded radioactivity thousands of times higher than what was actually recorded. Such levels would have triggered alarms at the plant to evacuate staff and residents from the surrounding area. If staff had been exposed to this much radiation, the ruthenium-106 would have been detectable. However, 250 of the Mayak site employees, including those working in its radiochemistry plant, were checked by an independent lab and none of them were found to have any traces of excess exposure.”
"Contrary to a speculative theory in the PNAS report, the cerium-144 project activities conducted at the Mayak facility from August to November 2017 were related only to rare-earth concentrate which would only contain barely detectable traces of ruthenium-106 isotope.”
       It took ten years for Russia to admit that the Chernobyl accident had occurred in 1986. On numerous other occasions, Russia has either refused to admit that nuclear accidents had occurred, or they downplayed the significance of an accident. Just recently, a fire on a Russian experimental submersible killed fourteen crewmen. It took days for Russians to admit that a fire had killed the crewmen. They were also very vague about exactly what the submersible was designed for and what happened.
       Taking their secretive attitude about nuclear accidents into account, it is difficult to accept what the Russian have said about the Ru-106 release. Their Mayak nuclear site has experienced a number of serious releases of radiation and radioactive materials. It would be wise to believe the European scientists who conducted a detailed study over the Russian announcement of total innocence. Mayak is probably the source of the Ru-106 release.