The Kremlin’s chief scientists on radiation medicine and meteorology—Leonid Ilyin and Yuri Izrael—refused to provide a definitive answer about the long-term effect of the spreading contamination. Summoned from Chernobyl to an urgent meeting with the Ukrainian government task force, the experts said that the reactor had been covered and radioactive emissions steeply reduced; soon they would cease altogether. They insisted that current radiation levels didn’t warrant an evacuation and recommended merely that the republic take further steps to keep the population informed of the ongoing measures
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