# Chernobyl over Romania

29 April–27 May 1986. Checked 20 September 2026.

On the night of 26 April 1986, reactor 4 at Chernobyl exploded. On 29–30
April the cloud reached Romania and stayed above it for a month.

## Four days of silence

The first news item appears only on 30 April, on page 6 of *România Liberă* —
a TASS relay about a “breakdown”. That same day Minister Milea reported on
the cloud to Ceaușescu; the public learned nothing.

## 1 May under the cloud

Festive county gatherings, while the press assured “normal limits”. On the
night of 1–2 May, rises “far above the normal limits” at Iași, Suceava,
Mureș, Cluj and Bucharest. On 3 May *Scînteia* admits it and prints the rules:
network water, washed greens, children kept from long hours outdoors.
By 27 May radioactivity was tending toward normal.

## The numbers

Extra 1986 dose: 1,250 μSv above 2,000 background. Highest caesium-137
deposition: 80 kBq/m², on the north-east–south-west axis. Airborne iodine at
Fundata: 17 Bq/m³. Iodine in Bucharest water: 29 Bq/l. Sheep milk: 10 kBq/l;
retail milk: 1.37 kBq/l. Cluj pollen: ≈10 kBq/kg.

## The verdict

Cloud in on 29–30 April, four days of silence, 1 May under the cloud, rules
from 3 May. The page claims no health effect in Romania.

## Sources

IAEA, WHO (Chernobyl at 30), Cosma et al. (EGU 2013), UBB thesis,
Băcan (LITUA XXV), Cosma/Iurian (Rom. J. Phys. 56), Bara & Ludușan
(Pangeea), Begy et al. 2017. Undocumented: rain over the Bucharest parade,
iodide reaching children, per-county deposition, health effects.