Radiation Leaks at Russian Research Center

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@ix.netcom.com>]

I normally do NOT post these news articles anymore, posting them to 
my news distribution list. However, I feel this is an informative 
article, and, am posting it to the forum.

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Tuesday June 17 10:50 AM EDT 

Radiation Leaks at Russian Research Center

MOSCOW (Reuter) - A radiation leak at a Russian research center that
makes nuclear weapons badly injured a worker Tuesday, the Nuclear
Energy ministry said. 

The Communist Party said its leader Gennady Zyuganov had been touring
the center at the time and had to cut short his visit. 

The ministry denied anyone had been evacuated apart from the victim
and said radiation levels outside the room where he was working were
normal, but a spokeswoman for the emergencies ministry said the area
nearby had been cleared. 

"At 10:50 on June 17, a serious violation of regulations in one of the
pieces of equipment in section number eight of Arzamas-16, caused an
irregular radiation situation involving the emission of neutron rays,"
it said in a statement. 

"One man who worked there, he was taken to the local clinic," ministry
spokesman Vitaly Nosonov said by telephone. "He's not in a good way.
He received a pretty big dose, a high dose and a high dose is 600
roentgen." 

"As for the rest, given that there is a certain level of radiation in
the room, they are now de-contaminating it and a commission has left
(Moscow) which will deal with this issue," Nosonov added, saying he
did not know what caused the incident. 

The statement said radiation levels outside the room and in the town,
which is about 30 miles from Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga River, were
normal. 

A spokeswoman for the authorities in Nizhny Novgorod said she had not
heard about the incident. 

At Communist Party headquarters in Moscow, an official said Zyuganov
had been campaigning at Arzamas on behalf of a local candidate for a
June 29 gubernatorial election in Nizhny Novgorod, 220 miles from
Moscow. 

"He was in Arzamas-16, not far from the site of the incident and he
was asked to leave the town, cutting off his visit, which he did," he
said. 

An official working for State Atomic Inspectorate said the plant was
not under its control since it was a mainly military research center,
one of two in Russia which designs and builds nuclear weapons. 

The town, closed to foreigners, has a population of about 80,000.
"There was no evacuation of the city as a whole, there was a partial
evacuation of the center itself," the emergencies ministry spokeswoman
said. 

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Sandy Perle
Technical Director
ICN Dosimetry Division
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
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