Most Russian post-Fukushima forecasts proved to be true

By the third anniversary of the Fukushima accident, most of the forecasts we made after it have proved to be true, Rafael Arutyunyan, First Deputy Director of the Nuclear Safety Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, told media, BelTA informs.

“This is especially good as we had very little facts to lean on during our calculations. We changed the forecasts as we received new facts that their expected radiation level was twice as low as we expected them to be in Mar 2011”, he noted.

“Today, based on a huge amount of radiological statistics, we can say that the radiation level in the area is not dangerous for human health. And this has been proved by many highly-competent organizations. And now, based on these facts, their authorities have decided to bring people back to their homes. And this is a right decision unlike the one they adopted in July 2011 when they declared as an evacuation zone the areas with the annual radiation level of more than 20 mSv during the first year. In those territories people would receive no more than 100-300 mSv throughout their lives against 300-1,000 mSv millions of their ancestors have received for centuries. All this plus the reports by the IAEA and the WHO have made the Japanese less emotional and more sensible. As a result, they are beginning to show a n increasingly more reasonable attitude towards nuclear energy”, expert underlined.