The area around the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine is radioactive in some cases highly contaminated. And it has been burning there for weeks. There is still concern that radiation particles will be carried to other regions with the smoke. Especially since, despite the massive increase in the number of emergency services, there is apparently still no great progress in the extinguishing work. According to the disaster control, almost 1400 firefighters continued to extinguish around six smoldering fires on Tuesday. (Read hiehow the fires could even be seen from space at the end.)
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Supported by heavy technology from the army, the Ukrainian authorities have meanwhile cut more than 400 kilometers of fire lanes. In the neighboring region of Zhytomyr, another 1,000 firefighters are also fighting forest fires.
The authorities reaffirmed that the radioactivity in the populated areas adjacent to the restricted area was below the limit values. The Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) in Germany confirmed on Tuesday that a significantly increased air concentration of the radioactive isotope cesium-137 had been measured within the restricted area. Outside the exclusion zone, for example in the capital Kiev, only slightly increased values were registered. These are not harmful to health.
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“Probably below the detection limit”
The wind thinned the cesium, according to the BfS. For Germany “there is still no danger of a radioactive cloud”. The wind blowing over the affected area “for the foreseeable future to the south, not to the west”. If that should change, the cesium-137 would still be diluted to a possible way to Germany so far that it would “probably be below the detection limit”. But keep an eye on the situation.
The French radiation protection agency IRSN published a simulation of the spread of cesium from the fire area in Ukraine at the end of last week. According to her, the radioactive substance would have passed through Germany in a very low concentration on April 8 and 9.
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The Federal Office for Radiation Protection monitors radioactivity in Germany with around 1,800 measuring probes nationwide. There is also a station for measuring radioactivity in the atmosphere on the Schauinsland near Freiburg, which is part of the global monitoring network for organizing the Treaty on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban (CTBTO). Lassina Zerbo, its executive secretary, had said that two of the organization’s measuring stations in Russia had measured “higher, but not dangerous” cesium concentrations.
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Fires have occurred several times in the unsettled areas of the exclusion zone around the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant in recent years. Arson was always suspected as the cause. This is how it should have been this year.
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Unit four in the then Soviet nuclear power plant at Chernobyl had exploded in April 1986. Radioactive contaminated areas around the nuclear ruin were blocked. It was the biggest nuclear disaster in the civilian use of nuclear power, thousands of people were killed or injured. Tens of thousands of people have been forcibly resettled.
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