Finns Detect High Levels of Radiation : 4 Times More Than After Chernobyl; Can’t Find Source

A monitoring station on Finland’s southern coast near the Soviet Union detected radiation levels four times higher than any registered in Finland after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, officials said today.

Officials said they did not know the cause but ruled out faulty instruments.

Readings of 1.8 milliroentgens per hour were taken Monday at a monitoring station in Kotka, a city about 120 miles west from Leningrad and 60 miles north of Soviet Estonia.

The levels declined to 0.03 milliroentgen, or near normal, by this afternoon, Interior Ministry official Esko Koskinen said.

0.45 Milliroentgens

After the Chernobyl nuclear accident, radiation levels in Finland reached 0.45 milliroentgens.

A milliroentgen is one-thousandth of a roentgen, the standard measure of ionizing radiation. Experts say exposure to 50 roentgens or more per year is dangerous and 400 roentgens per year can be fatal.

Leif Moberg, head of Sweden’s Radiation Institute, said two other Finnish monitoring stations near Kotka also registered higher than normal readings, but not as high as in Kotka.

Finland has two nuclear power stations. At the Lovisa station, just to the west of Kotka, no abnormal readings were reported, officials said. Moberg said monitoring stations in neighboring Sweden also did not detect unusual levels of radiation.

“We don’t know where the cloud came from, where it went or what could be the reason,” Moberg said.

“It was not a meter fault,” Koskinen said in a telephone interview.

Detected Monday Night

Finnish officials said aircraft were trying to find the source of the radiation, which was detected Monday night when winds were blowing onto the Finnish coast from the Soviet Union.

Finns were advised that they did not have to take precautions. Koskinen said it would be several days before officials could determine the extent of the contamination, if any, to crops in the region.

Antti Vuorinen, head of Finland’s Bureau of Nuclear Radiation Safety, said authorities had not contacted the Soviet government “because we don’t have a system for this sort of immediate contact with them.

“Since it is a short peak which came and went it is difficult to establish where it came from,” he said.

After the reports of high radiation levels, Finnish officials asked Sweden to check its nuclear power plants. Forsmark, the Swedish plant that alerted the West to radiation from the April 26 Chernobyl accident, reported nothing unusual, officials said.