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Bloomberg
Russia said air tests found traces of nuclear isotopes after a deadly blast that killed five atomic scientists and caused a spike in radiation at a remote military facility.
Barium-139, barium-140, strontium-91 and lanthanum-140 were found in a cloud of radioactive gases that drifted over the city of Severodvinsk following the explosion on a nearby offshore platform in the White Sea, the state meteorological and environmental monitoring service reported on its website.
The cloud caused a brief surge in radiation levels, but the isotopes had a short half-life of between 83 minutes and 12.8 days and “the radiation situation has stabilised†now,
it said. Radiation levels spiked as high as 16 times normal immediately after the explosion in the northern Arkhangelsk region. After Russia initially refused to acknowledge that radioactive materials were involved, the state nuclear agency, Rosatom, said five employees died during a weapons test.