The Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) reported on Sunday that the radiation levels in its vicinity are normal. The press release came in response to media reports about increased radiation levels detected by a Romanian measuring station.
“The stations around the Kozloduy N-plant have not detected any increases, and we would like to inform the Bulgarian public that there is no cause for concern,” the N-plant said, adding that radiation is monitored within a 100 km radius around the N-plant, located on the Danube, which separates Bulgaria and Romania.
A total of 26 stations of the Executive Environmental Agency (ExEA) monitor the state of the radiation gamma-background in Bulgaria and so far none has reported elevated levels. As of Sunday, the National Automated System for Continuous Monitoring of the Radiation Gamma Background has not recorded any changes on the territory of Bulgaria above the natural variations characteristic of the gamma background at the measurement sites, the ExEA said in a press release on Sunday.
Readings from stations located in the territory of Bulgaria, including those around Kozloduy NPP, are within the normal values of the natural gamma background, the Bulgarian Nuclear Regulation Agency (NRA) said on Sunday.
Kozloduy NPP Executive Director Valentin Nikolov told BTA that there was no increase in radiation background in Bulgaria. He admitted that there might be a technical problem at the measuring station in Romania, to which the media reports of a reported increase in radiation were linked.
As of 11 am on Saturday, the gamma background value readings from a station located in the town of Gighera, Romania were within the natural gamma background. At 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Saturday, readings of about 10 times the natural gamma background were recorded. In the same area, 3.3 km west and 8.5 km east of the station, there are two other stations whose readings for the same period are within the natural gamma background. The three stations are part of the EURDEP (EU Radiological Data Exchange Platform) information system of the Joint Research Institute JRC of the European Commission. No data are currently available from this station, according to the NRC.
The most probable reason for such inflated readings could be an unreliability in the measured values from the station or a technical problem, given the lack of inflated readings from the two neighbouring stations, according to the NRA.
/MY/
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