MOSCOW - A Russian scientist said yesterday that a Chernobyl style disaster could happen just outside Moscow because his institute could not afford to dispose of its large quantities of highly radioactive material.
"At present the conditions of radioactivity at the institute are more or less normal but nobody can predict the moment when a serious accident may happen," said Mr Sergei Mund, director of the Elektrogorsk Institute for Oil Processing.
Located on the institute's premises in Elektrogorsk, a small town 70 km east of Moscow, are 663 rods of cobalt-60, a highly radioactive material.