I
did a Google check on the world media and how they are covering this.
NOTHING from CNN and both the BBC and AP had brief pieces quoting
"Ukrainian authorities". The fires are put out and, of
course there's no radiation!!
RT,
29
April, 2015
Smoke
from burning forests in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is capable of
spreading contaminants across great distances, even after the fire
has been stopped, ecology experts told RT.
The
forest fire near the crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant started
on Tuesday and triggered an emergency alert, with police and National
Guard mobilized to bring the flames under control.
By
Wednesday, the country's Emergency Ministry, as well as the prime
minister, who went to the affected area, said the spread of the fire
had been stopped and firefighters were containing the remaining
flames. Later on Wednesday, Ukrainian TV reported the flames in areas
containing radioactive waste have been put out. New hot spots were
discovered, but they are outside the exclusion zone.
The
fire occurred within 30 kilometers of the Chernobyl power plant,
inside the exclusion zone which was abandoned and cordoned off almost
30 years ago. In 1986, an explosion and fire in Chernobyl's Reactor 4
caused a release of radioactive particles into the air, which
contaminated the surrounding area and caused an increase in radiation
levels in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and across Europe. It was the
worst ever nuclear disaster in terms of casualties and clean-up
costs. The crippled reactor itself was sealed under a sarcophagus of
reinforced concrete
Although
the sarcophagus remains untouched by the fire, decades-old
contaminants could still be released and travel far and wide, borne
aloft by the smoke, nuclear safety expert John H. Large told RT:
"Brush
fires and forest fires were the greatest concern in terms of the
means by which you can disperse a secondary radiological impact from
the original dissipation that occurred in 1986," he said.
John
went to Chernobyl in 2006 to assess the situation there and spoke to
dozens of scientists working on containing the contamination.
"In
the exclusion zone and further away you have an area that has been
abandoned for farming, abandoned for man management," John says.
"That means you've got lots of brush and young wood growing out
of control, and that means there's a big fuel load to have a fire."
He
says the high temperatures and volumes of smoke produced in a forest
fire can take contaminants hundreds of kilometers away from the
exclusion zone: "Radiation really doesn't respect any
international boundaries."
Forest
fires have happened in the area before, but have never been so
serious, Timothy Mousseau, biology professor at the University of
South Carolina, told RT:
"Previous
forest fires had re-released about eight percent of the radiation
from the original catastrophe. The fire that we're seeing today seems
to be on a much larger scale, and so we could see a re-dispersion of
a very significant component of the original radiation."
Another
problem is that as the trees that have absorbed contaminants burn up
and release smoke, this turns radioactive particles into a much more
dangerous form than if they simply lie in the ground.
"Internal
radiation from inhalation - in other words, if you inhale something
radioactive and it gets inside you - is very much more dangerous than
just the background radiation that comes off the ground," says
Christopher Busby, the scientific secretary of the European Committee
on Radiation Risks.
French
nuclear safety research institution IRSN created this simulation
video, modelling the spread of caesium-137 from the 1986 Chernobyl
disaster.
Christopher
Busby commented on how far radioactive particles can potentially
spread: "After Chernobyl itself, they ended up in the atmosphere
and they went right across the Baltic States and into Finland, and
over Sweden, and then to the United Kingdom, where they caused
significant increases in cancer."
However,
other scientists believe the danger is minimal, because instead of
being absorbed from the ground into the vegetation, contaminants
actually sank deeper: "30 years on, the radiation in the soil is
not on the surface, it has sunk down. New plants have grown on the
spot, which contain very small doses of radiation," Leonid
Bolshov, from the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute for safe
atomic energy development, told RIA Novosti.
He
said systems are in place to monitor radioactivity in the area: "When
there were [forest] fires in 2010, our institute created a special
method of determining the impact of the fires. Back then, we found no
danger. The sensors that have been placed everywhere, including the
Chernobyl zone, are not supposed to react - and they are not
reacting. We checked the sensor in Pripyat today; its readings have
been the same for the past two days." Pripyat is the abandoned
town closest to the Chernobyl power plant.
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