Forest fire flares up near Chornobyl plant (VIDEO)

A forest fire that broke out in the Chornobyl zone on June 29 is still burning but poses no threat to the disaster-struck nuclear plant, firefighters said on June 30.

The fire at one point reached an area of 25 hectares, Ukrainian officials say.

Ukraine’s Emergency Service reports that currently the radiation background in the Chornobyl exclusion zone, a 2,600 square kilometers site surrounding the Chornobyl nuclear power plant where radioactive contamination from fallout is the highest, is from 0.03 – 0.04 mR/h, with the maximum acceptable radiation level being 0.08 mR/h. There is no risk of an increase in radiation levels, officials said.

“I think that now and in the future there is no danger (that the fire will spread to the area of the Chornobyl reactor), because it’s burning on the border of the 10-kilometer Chornobyl zone,” Vasyl Slobodyanyk, the head of Ukraine’s Emergency Service in Kyiv Oblast, said in an interview with the 112 television news channel.

“The wind is southwesterly, so I don’t see any threat to the Chornobyl nuclear power station (which is located to the south-east of the fire.)”
Kyiv is also not in danger, and radiation levels in the Ukrainian capital have not increased, the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection said on June 30.

The blaze reportedly started as tree felling work was being done near the village of Buryakivka, some 50 kilometers to the northwest of the Chornobyl plant.

Currently 125 firefighters, 36 fire engines are fighting the fire, and the State Emergency Service has also dispatched a helicopter with a water-spraying device and two fire planes to put out the fire. As of 11 a.m. on June 30, firefighters had managed to reduce the burning area by eight hectares.

The wildfires in the contaminated Chornobyl zone have been common in Ukraine in recent years. One of the most serious fires to break out near the Chornobyl nuclear power plant occurred in 2015. Some 400 hectares of forests were engulfed in flames in that fire.

The Chornobyl nuclear power plant was the site of the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe in 1986. An explosion and fire that occurred as an experiment was being conducted on reactor four at the plant contaminated nearly 50,000 hectares of land with radioactive fallout.

Over 300,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes in areas near the plant as a result of the disaster.

A forest fire that broke out in the Chornobyl zone on June 29. Currently 125 firefighters, 36 fire engines are fighting the fire, and the State Emergency Service has also dispatched a helicopter with a water-spraying device and two fire planes to put out the fire.