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Russia Detects a Significant Radiation Spike In Mountains Close To Soviet-Era Nuclear Plant (nytimes.com)
According to a report via The New York Times, Russia said that it had detected a significant radiation spike in the Ural Mountains, close to a sprawling Soviet-era nuclear plant still remembered as the site of an accident 60 years ago. Russia did however reject suggestions that it was the source of a radioactive cloud that hovered over Europe. From the report: The location of the spike -- in the Chelyabinsk region near the border with Kazakhstan -- has been identified by French and German nuclear safety institutions as a potential source for a concentration of a radioactive isotope called ruthenium 106 detected in the air in late September above several European countries. But nuclear energy authorities in Moscow insisted Monday that still-higher levels of atmospheric contamination had been detected outside Russia, in southeastern Europe. Reports of the elevated radiation levels over Western Europe raised alarms, but nuclear safety authorities in France and Germany said there was no threat to human health or to the environment -- an assurance repeated on Tuesday by Moscow. The Russian state weather service Roshydromet said it had found what the Russian news media described as "extremely high pollution" at two monitoring facilities within a 62-mile radius of the Mayak nuclear reprocessing and isotope production plant. A weather station in the town of Argayash recorded ruthenium 106 levels that were 986 times higher than a month earlier, the state weather agency said. A second station at Novogorny detected levels 440 times higher. Ruthenium 106, which does not occur naturally and has a half-life of about a year, is used for medical purposes.
For weeks, Russian officials had denied the French and German accusations. Citing the results of its own air monitoring on European territory, Moscow pointed to high radiation levels over Romania, Italy and Ukraine, insisting that there had been only a negligible presence of ruthenium 106 on Russian territory. On Tuesday, even after the Russian agency acknowledged the radiation spike in the Urals, Maxim Yakovenko, the head of Roshydromet, said in a statement that higher levels of contamination had been detected in Romania than in Russia. "The published data is not sufficient to establish the location of the pollution source," he said. The authorities at Mayak denied in a news release on Tuesday that the plant had contributed to the increased levels of ruthenium 106 and insisted that there was no threat to human beings.
For weeks, Russian officials had denied the French and German accusations. Citing the results of its own air monitoring on European territory, Moscow pointed to high radiation levels over Romania, Italy and Ukraine, insisting that there had been only a negligible presence of ruthenium 106 on Russian territory. On Tuesday, even after the Russian agency acknowledged the radiation spike in the Urals, Maxim Yakovenko, the head of Roshydromet, said in a statement that higher levels of contamination had been detected in Romania than in Russia. "The published data is not sufficient to establish the location of the pollution source," he said. The authorities at Mayak denied in a news release on Tuesday that the plant had contributed to the increased levels of ruthenium 106 and insisted that there was no threat to human beings.
You sound exactly like a bad Russian troll brigade recruit. But serious answer: The environmental fate of radioactive particles is subject to quite a few natural processes, as well as human movements of contaminated materials which then are subject to different processes at the new site(s). The short half-life of ruthenium 106 and its presence in exactly two areas means more than casual geospatial separation. You have no context for any watershed movements beneath the surface or even above it. That is requried for distance to matter or not, as that is what allows the radioactive pollution to travel. Russia has long failed in enforcing clean-up of industrial sites, and the Soviet successors have only done anything with massive international backing (The Sarcophagus at Chernobyl, etc.).
There were a series of accidents at Mayak, this is just another one. It's worth noting that this is not a power plant but a military installation producing weapons grade plutonium. Together, the accidents (one of which was actually caused by an idiot pouring a plutonium solution down the drain) have released more radioactive material than Chernobyl and Fukushima put together. The only reason this didn't result in a major catastrophe is because the surrounding area is very sparsely inhabited. But while the number of direct deaths was low, because the authorities kept the whole thing under wraps (doctors weren't allowed to diagnose people in the area with cancer for example), the number of deaths from radiation poisoning of the groundwaters is very hard to determine. We are not talking about a single big event here, more of a contamination that have been going on for decades, and because of this its impact is staggeringly large compared to its "visibility".
The mention of 106Ru without any mention of the other more prominent Radionuclides leads me to the conclusion that whatever bad happened was very recent, and not six decades back. That would be some 59 Half-Lifes.
I find it unlikely that it came from a Medical Facility, they just don't use enough, to be detected in this way. Fuel Reprocessing may be more likely, but it would have to be very recent Fuel, "Fresh Fission", and that is usually kept somewhere cool for a few years to calm down. So either an Incident, or a very bad Incident.
A bit more troubling is that 106Ru is pretty much only a Fission Product of 239Pu, (Bad joke: Putinium.), so Fuel alone would appear to be less and less likely, and either a sudden booboo concerning the production, or separation, of 239Pu more and more likely.
Without other Radionuclides present, separation is most likely, and Russia isn't supposed to be doing that.
A useful Graphic of Fission Yields;
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/ThermalFissionYield.svg
Putinium indeed.