Estonia

[D J Hornsey <bssdjh@bath.ac.uk>]

The following information is abstracted from the Newsletter of the 
Swedish Radiation Protection Institute, August 1995:
The box holding cylindrical sources of Cs-137 was probably a piece of the 
internal wall of a sterization chamber. Several such chambers existed in 
the old Soviet Union some 20 years ago. The plants were reconstructed and 
Co-60 was substituted for the caesium. The sources were approx. 4 cm long 
and 2 cm dia. and contained 3.7 TBq (100 Ci) giving a dose of 30 Gy/h 
(3000rads/h) at 10 cm.
In January 1995, a second box was discovered in Estonia. Estonian 
specialists travelling by car on the highway between Tallinin and Narva at 
the Russian border with their radiation monitors on detected increased 
radiation levels at one point in the journey and found the offending 
article some 10 metres off the road close to a childrens playground. So 
far no injuries have been detected in the 10 or so children known to have 
played around the site. The disturbing observation is that there may be 
many more of these boxes discarded around the countryside. The IAEA
will be delivering a detailed report of the incident when the analysis of 
their investigation is completed.

David Hornsey <D.J.Hornsey@bath.ac.uk>