From the Finnish News Agency
No 24, Feb 1, 1996
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Norway registered radioactive fallout for a week in January that could
be from a nuclear reactor abroad, an official said in Oslo on
Wednesday.

Finland, which was one of several countries to be hit by fallout from
the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in the Soviet Union in 1986, also
measured fresh fallout in the same period but Finnish officials said
the radioactivity was within normal limits.

The Norwegian readings of Iodine and Cesium 137 were made in places as
far apart as the Arctic province of Finnmark to the north and the
capital of Oslo in the south.

"We have measured nucleids from a reactor between January 8 and 15. 

They are not found in nature," Eldri Naadland, a researcher at
Norway's State Radiation Protection Agency, said."The wind came from
the south and southeast in that week."  Norway's daily Aftenposten
said this would indicate the fallout stemmed from Russia or the Baltic
states, but said the Russians had told the Nordic countries there had
been no leaks from nuclear power plants.

Naadland said the readings were higher than normal but very small and
posed no threat to health.

In Helsinki, the Finnish Centre for Radiation and Nuclear Safety said
it detected this kind of fresh fallout on 17 occasions last
year. Contact with the Russian side is regular. "These concentrations
detected now are very small indeed,"Hannele Aaltonen, director of
preparedness at the centre, said.

For instance during Chernobyl the centre measured some 200-300 million
micro-becquerels per cubic metre, but the January measurements were
1-10, she said. STT/FNB.

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