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Part 1 of 2 Parts
       There is a group of nuclear scientists known as the “Ring of Five” who have been monitoring the atmosphere over Europe for elevated levels of radiation. They have been carrying out this task since the mid-1980s. The name “Ring of Five” comes from the fact that originally the group was composed scientists from five countries including Sweden, Germany, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Currently there are scientists from twenty-two countries participating in the monitoring. They monitor radioactive contamination of the air over Europe twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a year.
     This group discovered that in late 2017, the atmosphere over Europe showed elevated levels of ruthenium-106, a radioactive isotope of the element ruthenium. This isotope is often produced in the reprocessing of nuclear fuel. I blogged about this in 2017. At the time, there was a lot of debate about the origins of the plume of ruthenium-106 but no definite answers.
     Georg Steinhauser is a professor at the Institute of Radioecology and Radiation Protection of the University of Hanover in Germany. He is a member of the Ring of Five group. He said, “We did not have any anticipation that there might be some radioactivity in the air. We were just measuring air filters as we do on a weekly basis, 52 times a year, and suddenly there was an unexpected result.”
    For two years there have been arguments over where the plume of radiation came from. Many analysts claimed that it originated in southwest Russia, but the Russian government repeatedly denied it. In a report issued in July of this year, the Ring of Five say that the radiation plume of ruthenium-106 was released by an undisclosed nuclear accident at the Mayak nuclear facility in Russia.
    Mayak was a center of Soviet nuclear weapons development and nuclear fuel reprocessing in the closed city of Ozyorsk. Ozyorsk/Mayak was a secret installation that was not on any maps of the Chelyabinsk Oblast (province).  Lake Karachy is located near the Mayak facility. So much nuclear waste was dumped into that lake that if you stood on the shore for an hour, the radiation that you absorbed would kill you.
     There was a horrible nuclear accident that caused an explosion in at the Mayak faciliity in 1957. This was considered to be the third worst nuclear accident in history. The accident spread radioactive particles over an area of twenty thousand square miles where two hundred and seventy thousand people lived. Over ten thousand people in nearby villages were forced to evacuate their homes. Whole villages were abandoned and removed from maps. Since Ozyorsk is not on the map, the disaster was named after the biggest town nearby that was on the map.
     Russia authorities have never admitted that any nuclear accidents occurred at the Mayak facility in 2017. They have not responded to the July report from the Right of Five. Last month, the Ring of Five delivered a second report that provides more evidence that a serious accident took place at Mayak in 2017. They have even nailed down a specific date for the accident. Most of the ruthenium-106 was released on the 26th of September 2017.
Please read Part 2
Mayak area: