Effects of the Chernobyl disaster Other Report on Chernobyl"). The 2006 TORCH report claimed that: In terms of their surface areas, Belarus (22% of its land area) and Austria (13%) were most affected by higher levels of contamination. Other countries were seriously affected; for example, more than 5% of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden were contaminated to high levels (> 40,000 Bq/m caesium-137). More than 80% of Moldova, the European part of Turkey, Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria and the Slovak Republic were contaminated to lower levels (> 4,000 Bq/m caesium-137). And 44% of Germany and 34% of the UK were similarly affected. (See map of radioactive distribution
Caesium-137 possible so that some of the 110,000 people can return. A number of techniques are being considered that will be able to strip out 80% to 95% of the caesium from contaminated soil and other materials efficiently and without destroying the organic material in the soil. These include hydrothermal blasting. The caesium precipitated with ferric ferricyanide (Prussian blue) would be the only waste requiring special burial sites. The aim is to get annual exposure from the contaminated environment down to 1 millisievert (mSv) above background. The most contaminated area where radiation doses are greater than 50 mSv/year must remain off