Firefighters on Monday said they were still trying to
extinguish two fires that had begun on Saturday and which had spread to a
part of the 30-mile
“exclusion zone” round the station, the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986.
Around 100 firefighters, backed by planes and helicopters, were deployed, every day after they succeeded in putting out a part of the hearth at another nearby site.
The fires have sparked fears about radiation in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, which is about 60 miles south of Chernobyl, but authorities said that testing by experts sent by the govt on Monday had found that there had been no rise in radiation levels in Kyiv or its surrounding suburbs.
“You needn’t be afraid to open your windows or to air out your apartment during quarantine,” Yegor Firsov, the top of Ukraine’s state ecological inspection service wrote on his Facebook page on Monday.
Ukraine’s state emergency service said that by Monday evening around 20 hectares (50 acres) were still ablaze inside the exclusion zone. Video posted by the service Monday showed a helicopter flying over the hearth and firefighters on the bottom spraying water. every day earlier, the service said a part of the hearth had been extinguished near the villages of Volodymyrivka and Zhovtneve, near the zone’s edge.
Police said that they had tracked down a 27 year-old man they suspected had started the hearth by igniting long grass within the area. the person had told them that he had set fire to some garbage and grass “for fun” but that. fanned by the wind. the hearth had quickly got out of control and he had been unable to extinguish it, police said in an exceedingly statement.
The fires attracted international attention after Firsov, the top of the ecological inspection service, published a post on Sunday warning that radiation levels at the center of the hearth had risen 16 times above the norm.
“There is bad news—radiation is above norm at the middle of the hearth,” he wrote on Sunday. He included a video showing a counter tube beeping with a reading of two.3 micro sieverts per hour. He wrote that it absolutely was it difficult for firefighters to place out the blaze.
Firsov blamed the hearth on what he called the “barbaric” practice of burning grass and urged lawmakers to introduce legislation that will significantly increase fines for causing forest fires.
The state emergency service issued an pollution warning for Kyiv on Monday, but said it absolutely was associated with climatic conditions and not the fires, stressing that radiation levels were normal. It noted that gamma ray levels round the fires had not risen.
Forest fires near Chernobyl are common and have occurred for the past three years in an exceedingly row. The exclusion zone has existed round the station since April 1986 when its fourth reactor exploded, spreading radioactive pollution across Europe. The station’s other three reactors continued to supply electricity until 2000, after they were close up.
In 2016, a large stadium-sized dome was moved over the destroyed fourth reactor to interchange a concrete shield called the “sarcophagus” that had been erected following the accident which was decaying.
Around 100 firefighters, backed by planes and helicopters, were deployed, every day after they succeeded in putting out a part of the hearth at another nearby site.
The fires have sparked fears about radiation in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, which is about 60 miles south of Chernobyl, but authorities said that testing by experts sent by the govt on Monday had found that there had been no rise in radiation levels in Kyiv or its surrounding suburbs.
“You needn’t be afraid to open your windows or to air out your apartment during quarantine,” Yegor Firsov, the top of Ukraine’s state ecological inspection service wrote on his Facebook page on Monday.
Ukraine’s state emergency service said that by Monday evening around 20 hectares (50 acres) were still ablaze inside the exclusion zone. Video posted by the service Monday showed a helicopter flying over the hearth and firefighters on the bottom spraying water. every day earlier, the service said a part of the hearth had been extinguished near the villages of Volodymyrivka and Zhovtneve, near the zone’s edge.
Police said that they had tracked down a 27 year-old man they suspected had started the hearth by igniting long grass within the area. the person had told them that he had set fire to some garbage and grass “for fun” but that. fanned by the wind. the hearth had quickly got out of control and he had been unable to extinguish it, police said in an exceedingly statement.
The fires attracted international attention after Firsov, the top of the ecological inspection service, published a post on Sunday warning that radiation levels at the center of the hearth had risen 16 times above the norm.
“There is bad news—radiation is above norm at the middle of the hearth,” he wrote on Sunday. He included a video showing a counter tube beeping with a reading of two.3 micro sieverts per hour. He wrote that it absolutely was it difficult for firefighters to place out the blaze.
Firsov blamed the hearth on what he called the “barbaric” practice of burning grass and urged lawmakers to introduce legislation that will significantly increase fines for causing forest fires.
The state emergency service issued an pollution warning for Kyiv on Monday, but said it absolutely was associated with climatic conditions and not the fires, stressing that radiation levels were normal. It noted that gamma ray levels round the fires had not risen.
Forest fires near Chernobyl are common and have occurred for the past three years in an exceedingly row. The exclusion zone has existed round the station since April 1986 when its fourth reactor exploded, spreading radioactive pollution across Europe. The station’s other three reactors continued to supply electricity until 2000, after they were close up.
In 2016, a large stadium-sized dome was moved over the destroyed fourth reactor to interchange a concrete shield called the “sarcophagus” that had been erected following the accident which was decaying.
Although some hotspots remain, radiation levels in most of
the exclusion zone don't seem to be above normal and it's effectively
become a nature reserve. Organized tourism at the positioning has boomed
since last year’s HBO mini-series “Chernobyl.”