REAL LIFE NEWS: THE RADIOACTIVE RUSSIAN WAR MONUMENT
by Hazed
A war monument in a Russian park has been leaking radiation over 150 times the safe level, it has been discovered.
The anti-aircraft gun from the Soviet era has been on public display in the city of Arkhangelsk for the last four years in a park commemorating Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany, and during this time children have had fun clambering all over it. But recently Dmitry Surin, a local man, used a portable radiation counter to check the city’s main landmarks simply “out of sheer interest” and discovered the monument gave off very high figures.
His counter showed a reading of 46.99, when safe levels would be just 0.30. He shared the figures on a Russian social media network, and then contacted the Emergencies Ministry. They reacted swiftly and showed up to check the monument without half an hour, then removed the gun before midnight the same day.
Dmitry conjectures that the radiation is from radioactive parts that somebody forgot to remove before putting the gun on display. The gun was acquired from the Defence Ministry in 2013, and the city mayor’s office said it had “passed all the required checks”. Presumably, the requirement didn’t involve checking for radiation!
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-40514253
