She said that according to the information currently available, it can be considered that the cause of the increased level of radioactivity could not be related to the “heat of Riga”, because other radionuclides have been found in the sea that do not occur in the ash from the company’s burnt chips.
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“Judging by the publicly available information, the pollution in the Baltic Sea is not related to the heat of Riga,” Kļaveniece said.
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At the same time, the representative of the Service informed that the International Atomic Energy Agency had requested Member States to provide information on a radiation incident or increased radiation measurement that could have led to the detected increased radiation measurements. According to her, Latvia will have to provide information on whether there have been any accidents and data on the detected measurements.
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It has already been reported that in 2018, radioactive contamination was discovered in the fuel of “Rīgas siltums”, which was four to six times higher than allowed. According to the “Nothing Personal” program at the time, the interim investigation revealed that the source of the radiation was a consignment of wood chips imported from Belarus. This was revealed when the chips were already burned and taken to the municipal landfill “Getliņi”.
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On June 14, 2018, the radiation monitoring gate at the Getliņi municipal waste landfill responded. Imants Stirāns, Chairman of the Board of SIA Getliņi EKO, explained at the time that when entering the landfill, any car is scanned. If the radiation level exceeds the permitted level, the machine is stopped.
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The intercepted cargo contained wood chips. The chips were used as fuel in the “Rīgas siltuma” boiler house in Zasulauka. Radiation specialists called to the landfill have admitted that the concentration of cesium radionuclide in the ash samples in the laboratory was four to six times higher than the permissible norm.
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After the incident, “Rīgas siltums” suspended operations for more than a month in four boiler houses in “Daugavgrīva”, “Vecmīlgrāvis”, “Ziepniekkalns” and “Zasulauka”. No elevated levels of radiation were detected in any of them, however, employees were given radiation meters and specially trained.
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As reported, the Nordic radiation safety services in the Baltic Sea region this week recorded a slightly elevated level of radiation, which is not so high as to harm human health or the environment.
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According to Dutch experts, this could be related to the depressurisation of a nuclear fuel element at one of the nuclear power plants in western Russia.
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Meanwhile, the Russian news agency TASS, referring to the representative of the state nuclear energy group “Rosenergoatom”, reports that neither of the two nuclear power plants in the northwest of the country reported any problems.
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