You're reading: Monitors: Chornobyl accident leaves background radiation in Belarus unchanged

Minsk - Tuesday's partial collapse of the concrete ceiling in a defunct turbine room at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant has caused no increase in background radiation levels in Belarus, the country's Radiation Control and Environmental Monitoring Center said on Wednesday. 

Radiation levels measured in Belarus on Tuesday and Wednesday were effectively the same as those that have been recorded for many years, the center told Interfax.

Automated measurement stations in Belarusian areas close to Ukraine’s Chornobyl and Rivne nuclear power plants, Lithuania’s Ignalina plant and Russia’s Smolensk plant showed that background radiation “remains unchanged,” it said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate said Tuesday’s accident, in which several concrete slabs fell off the ceiling in the turbine room had caused no increases in radiation levels at the plant or in the exclusion area around it.

The site of the accident was an area of 600 square meters.

The stricken turbine room is part of Generating Unit No. 4, which was badly damaged in the 1986 disaster.