“Before the iodine pills were only given to people living within a perimeter of twenty kilometres”, said Belgian Health Minister Maggie De Block.
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A Dutch health ministry spokesman said on Friday iodine pills, which help reduce radiation build-up in the thyroid, would be given to children under 18 and pregnant women living within a 62 miles radius of a plant. The move was spurred in part by increasing worries from neighboring countries over the deteriorating condition of two of Belgium’s nuclear plants.
Germany asked “critical questions” in December a year ago after hairline fractures and a water leak caused the Doel 3 reactor near Antwerp to be shut down, while more cracks were found at the Tihange 2 reactor near Liège.
The pills will be sent to pharmacies, and the public would be ordered to collect their ration in the event of a meltdown.
The thyroid can’t tell the difference between stable and radioactive iodine, so the potassium iodide pills can be taken to pre-emptively “fill” the thyroid with safe iodine before radioactive iodine enters the body.
It insists its reactors, despite technical faults and an unsolved sabotage incident, around the time of the Brussels terrorist attacks, comply with stringent global safety standards. Mohammed Bakkali, from Brussels was arrested in November 2015 after it was suspected that he was involved with the Paris attacks, is one of the prime figures in the suspected dirty bomb plot. Last year, residents in the East End of Toronto were given iodine pills as a precautionary measure.
There are also concerns over Belgium’s ageing nuclear plants which have been subject to repeated safety warnings and defects in pressure vessels and fires.
In Belgium, Jean-Marc Nollet, from the green policy Ecolo Party, welcomed the move but said the use of nuclear power needed to be limited.
There have also been concerns at the security of Belgium’s creaking nuclear energy plants, including two 40-year-old reactors.
“Every country has updated its plans for a nuclear emergency”, the Health Minister told Belgian TV, but it is unclear what the similarities between Belgium’s nuclear safety and Japan’s disaster, which happened when an quake led to a tsunami and all three reactor cores largely melted down.
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The risk would not disappear if Belgians were given pills, he said.
