Russians panic-buy nuclear aids

Widespread fear that Japan’s nuclear crisis could send radioactive fallout Russia’s way is proving a bonanza for shops selling everything from face masks and iodine to vodka and wine.

Residents also are stocking up on seaweed and dosimeters, a device for measuring the total absorbed dose from exposure to ionising radiation.

No increase in exposure levels in the region have been reported since the Fukushima nuclear power plant began releasing radiation.

The plant is about 600 miles east of Vladivostok, a major port and the largest city in the Russian Far East.

Even if a reactor at Fukushima explodes, “there is no danger for Russia’s Far East,” the head of Russia’s atomic energy agency, Sergei Kirienko, said today. Prevailing winds would probably send fallout from a blast out over the Pacific Ocean.

But many Russians distrust official assurances, apparently remembering the secrecy and lies that followed the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion in 1986.

Airlines say they have sold out of tickets from the Russian Far East to Moscow and western Russia.

“Some people are just freaking out,” Pyotr Laduzhin, a computer engineer in Vladivostok, said. “It’s an old Soviet fear of a nuclear attack.”

He added he has been measuring radiation using a meter he bought in 2007, shortly after North Korea tested its nuclear weapons.

“I feel safer when I see with my own eyes that radiation is normal,” he said.

Companies dealing in dosimeters, iodine and face masks are stirring fears to boost sales, said an Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman in the mainland Primorsky region.

“It is a pity that certain businessmen are trying to profit on the situation,” she said.