"The population's radiation exposure levels as a result of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster have significantly decreased in 30 years. In 13 of the 14 Russian federal subjects affected, there is not a single population center where critical population groups' disaster-linked average exposure level exceeds one millisievert per year," the ministry said in a report obtained by RIA Novosti.
The report comes ahead of Tuesday's 30-year anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukrainian town of Pripyat, which affected hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia.
Russia's Bryansk Region, which is the nearest to the disaster zone, is the only federal subject with radiation exposure above safe levels, according to the report. Average yearly radiation doses exceed one millisievert per year in 299 of the region's population centers, the ministry said.
Earlier in April, the ministry reported that the number of Russian towns and villages contaminated by radiation as a result of the Chernobyl disaster has halved since the start of the 1990s.
The Chernobyl power plant was destroyed in a meltdown on April 26, 1986. An area of over 80,000 square miles was contaminated by the radioactive fallout in the then Ukrainian Soviet Republic, as well as in Belarus, Russia and the Baltic region. Russia's Bryansk Region bore the heaviest toll, with some 7,500 square miles contaminated.
