Big Bomb Scare Turns Out to be Dud

Residents of several Hungarian cities and towns are reported to have spent the second half of this week in a state of utter panic over unverified reports that a nuclear reactor in a neighboring country had melted down, sending plumes of lethal radioactivity over Hungary. According to this report, the nuclear terror was spread via e-mail and SMS. The warnings, which cited well-known Hungarian media as sources, spoke of accidents at the infamous Chernobyl reactor complex in Ukraine, as well as plants in the Czech and Slovak Republics. Despite the lack of confirmation by either the Hungarian media or the authorities, terrified citizens in several parts of Hungary were reported to have flocked to pharmacies in search of iodine tablets, in some cases completely depleting the stores' stocks of the anti-radiation tablets.

Happily for Hungary, the reports are totally bogus. According to klubradio.hu, neither the Nuclear Energy Office (Atomenergia Hivatal) nor Disaster Defense (Katasztrófavédelem) knows about any dangerous radiation. "There are 70 measuring probes in Hungary measuring all nuclear and radioactive radiation, and all of them indicate a value far below what is dangerous to health," said Tibor Dobson, spokesman for Disaster Defense.

Other experts are warning about the dangers of taking iodine tablets. Attila Aszódi, director of the Nuclear Technics Institution at the Budapest University of Technical and Economic Sciences, who recently led an expedition to Chernobyl, said anyone who tells people to take iodine tables without a reason is committing a crime, because the tablets can be dangerous when used needlessly.

To the question of whether what happened in 1986 could ever happen again - back then, the Communist authorities refused to talk about the explosion and its dangers for several days - Dobson said, "Twenty years have passed since the Chernobyl disaster, and numerous changes in regulations and technology have been made. The news about any nuclear accident that might have happened in any country could not be withheld, because it would be revealed through the media systems."

But just to be on the safe side the Atomenergia Hivatal and Katasztrófavédelem send out the following email, which someone forwarded to us:

It has happened for the second time in Hungary that false alarming news about nuclear accidents spread via e-mail and mobile phone are causing unnecessary panic among citizens. The National Nuclear Power Office and the National Disaster Defense, based on information received from the authorities of neighboring countries and the indication of the Hungarian measuring system, would like to inform the population that the news about a nuclear accident are ungrounded, and the radiation in the country is equal to the usual level of the background radiation.

The author of the email hoax could reportedly face up to three years in jail for urging people to take iodine without cause. Meanwhile, the former Communist functionaries who ordered the cover-up of the Chernobyl disaster were expected to spend the weekend at their luxurious country estates, or on vacation in France.