When I woke this morning THIS flashed across my screen. How can one react to this other than let out one long expletive?!!
I listened to Chris Busby on RT this morning being interviewed. He is living in Riga, Latvia. The very moment the interviewer went to ask him about international co-operation the line went dead and Chris was prevented from answering the question.
Forest
fires heading for Chernobyl nuclear plant – Ukraine Interior
Ministry
The
Ukrainian National Guard has been put on high alert due to worsening
forest fires around the crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant,
according to Ukraine Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
RT,
28
April, 2015
"The
forest fire situation around the Chernobyl power plant has worsened,"
a statement on Avakov's Facebook page says.
"The
forest fire is heading in the direction of Chernobyl's installations.
Treetop flames and strong gusts of wind have created a real danger of
the fire spreading to an area within 20 kilometers of the power
plant. There are about 400 hectares [988 acres] of forests in the
endangered area."
Police
and National Guard units are on high alert. Ukraine’s Prime
Minister personally went to the affected area to oversee the
firefighting. He says the situation is under control, “but this is
the biggest fire since 1992.”
However,
in comments to Russia’s Moscow Speaks radio, a representative of
Greenpeace Russia said that the situation is much worse: “A very
large, catastrophic forest fire is taking place in a 30-km zone
around the Chernobyl power plant. We estimate the real area of the
fire to be 10,000 hectares; this is based on satellite images. This
hasn't been officially acknowledged yet.”
The
potential danger in this fire comes from the radioactive contaminants
the burning plants have absorbed, ecologist Christopher Busby told
RT. “Some
of the materials that were contaminating that area would ahve been
incorporated into the woods. In other words, they land on the ground
in 1986 and they get absorbed into the trees and all the biosphere.
And when it burns, they just become re-suspended. It's like Chernobyl
all over again. All of that material that fell on the ground will now
be burned up into the air and will become available for people to
breathe."Christopher
Busby is the scientific secretary of the European Committee on
Radiation Risks.
Ecologist
Dmitry Shevchenko from the Environmental Watch on North Caucasus
says it is difficult topredict where exactly the contaminants will
go: “We
don't have a real-time monitoring system for the Chernobyl area. We
can hypothesize whether the radionuclides will go here or there, but
there is no-one who can reliably predict the situation."
Ukrainian
emergency services say 182 people and 34 vehicles have been
dispatched to fight the fire. A Mi-8 helicopter and three An-32 water
dropping airplanes are also working at the scene. The efforts are
being coordinated from a mobile emergency headquarters.
According
to the head of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone management department,
radiation levels in the area remain normal. “The
area on fire is relatively clean,” Vasily
Zolotoverkh told the newspaper kp.ua. He said the fire started at
lunchtime, when emergency workers had finished putting out an earlier
blaze which started during the night. The emergency services
have stated that it could have been caused by a lit cigarette.
Ukraine's
acting head of emergency services said earlier the forest fires were
not a threat to the sarcophagus sealing off Chernobyl's crippled
Reactor 4.
Chernobyl
and the surrounding area have been abandoned and remain off-limits
following the April 1986 disaster, when an explosion and fire
released massive amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
Increased radiation levels were detected throughout Europe.
Chernobyl
became the worst nuclear disaster in world history in terms of
casualties and clean-up costs. Reactor 4, where the blast took place,
was sealed off in a giant reinforced concrete sarcophagus to prevent
further leaks.
This is missing from both CNN and Reuters. Apparently executions of drug criminals in Indonesia i smore important.
However there was this on Reuters (UK).
'By the way folks - just a small thing- forest fires are threatening Chernobyl
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