Nerves on edge over Chernobyl

Ukraine says radiation levels normal after forest blaze triggers concerns

KIEV/MOSCOW－Hundreds of firefighters on Monday battled a forest blaze in Ukraine's Chernobyl exclusion zone while officials insisted there was no risk to the ruined reactor and nearby storage facilities for nuclear waste.

"There is no threat to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the storage facilities," Volodymyr Demchuk, a senior official from Ukraine's Emergency Situations Service, said in a video statement late on Monday. He said the service was still fighting the fires, but that the situation was under control.

The fire broke out 10 days ago at the scene of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986.

Kiev has mobilized helicopters and more than 400 firefighters, with planes dropping tonnes of water on the fire.

Demchuk said firefighters are now focused on stopping the spread.

Video footage shot by Reuters on Sunday showed plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky and trees still ablaze, with firefighters in helicopters trying to put out the fires.

Aerial images of the 30 km exclusion zone around the plant showed scorched, blackened earth and the charred stumps of still smoldering trees.

While forest fires are common in the exclusion zone, activists said on Monday that this is the worst since the nuclear explosion.

They said that analysis of satellite images showed the fire at its closest point was just 1.5 kilometers from the protective dome over the ruined reactor.

Sergiy Zibtsev, head of the Regional Eastern European Fire Monitoring Center, said the fire is "super huge" and "unpredictable".

"In the west of the exclusion zone it has already covered 20,000 hectares by our calculations," Zibtsev said.

The Ukrainian emergency service has not provided recent figures on the size of the fire.

Yaroslav Yemelianenko, head of the Chernobyl tour guide association, said the fire had reached the ghost town of Pripyat, a city near Chernobyl whose population of around 50,000 was evacuated after the explosion.

Pripyat has become popular with tourists from all over the world.

"The situation is critical," Yemelianenko wrote on his Facebook page.

'Completely safe'

However, Ukraine's Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko said there is no danger in relation to the nuclear waste storage facilities.

"It's completely safe," he said on Facebook.

The Emergency Situations Service said radiation levels in the exclusion zone had not changed and those in nearby Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, "did not exceed natural background levels".

The fire broke out on April 4 in a forested area near the Chernobyl power plant.

Police said the blaze was started by a 27-year-old man burning dry grass near the exclusion zone around the ruined reactor. It remains unclear if the person, who has reportedly confessed to starting a number of fires "for fun", is partly or fully responsible.

The flames spread quickly, fanned by strong winds, and Kiev began deploying helicopters and firefighting planes.

Government agencies have insisted the fire has not caused a spike in radiation levels.

The head of the state ecological service, Yegor Firsov, wrote on Facebook a day after the fire broke out that levels at the center of the fire were higher than normal. He later withdrew the claim.

Chernobyl polluted a large swathe of Europe when its fourth reactor exploded in April 1986.

People are not allowed to live within 30 km of the power station.

The three other reactors at Chernobyl continued to generate electricity until the power station finally closed in 2000. A giant protective dome was put in place over the fourth reactor in 2016.