Topical problems of determining the actual status of settlements contaminated after the Chernobyl accident

Problems of determining the legal status of territories exposed to radioactive contamination as a result of the Chernobyl accident and drawing up the list of the settlements contaminated with radionuclides are discussed in the article. Attributing the territories to a specific zone of radioactive contamination is very important because it allows to assign a level of social guarantees including special benefits granted to the residents. The previous list of the settlements modified on the basis of topical levels of radioactive contamination (data of the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring), radiation doses (data of the Federal Service on Customers’ Rights Protection and Human Well-Being Surveillance), size of population residing in the contaminated settlements (data of Federal State Statistics Service) is considered in the article.