Perilous
Times
Forest fires around Chernobyl release high levels of
radiation, scientists warn
Consortium says $13.5m is needed to improve firefighting and
monitoring in radiation-soaked plantations around station
* Patrick Evans in Chernobyl
* The Guardian, Tuesday 26 April 2011
Chernobyl : radiation dosage rate of working clothes in the state
radiation ecology reserve
Engineers measure radiation in the forests around Chernobyl's
decommissioned station. Photograph: Tatyana Zenkovich/EPA
A consortium of Ukrainian and international scientists is making
an urgent call for a $13.5m (£8.28m) programme to prevent
potentially catastrophic wildfires inside the exclusion zone
surrounding Chernobyl's ruined nuclear power plant.
The fear is that fires in the zone could release clouds of
radioactive particles that are, at the moment, locked up in trees,
held mainly in the needles and bark of Scots pines.
The consortium says an automated fire detection and monitoring
system and new firefighting and forestry equipment are needed to
guarantee safe management of Chernobyl's forests.
Since 1992, six years after the nuclear accident at the Ukrainian
power plant which released large quantities of radioactive
contamination into the atmosphere, there have been more than 1,000
wildfires inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone (CEZ), the 18-mile
radius ring around the plant where access restrictions apply.
If there is a catastrophic or "crown" fire (a high-intensity
wildfire affecting a large part of the CEZ) radionuclides could be
dispersed over a wide area; a big fire could send radioactivity as
far as Britain.
A £3.98m plan for "basic emergency measures" has been approved by
scientists from the National University of Life and Environmental
Sciences of Ukraine, Yale University and the UN Global Fire
Monitoring Centre. The Ukrainian government has not fully endorsed
the proposal but if it is adopted it could need at least £4.29m
more in international funding and technical support, say the
scientists.
Firefighters tackling woodland fires near Chernobyl lack
monitoring as well as equipment. Jakov Kalynik, a firefighter at
Parishev station, about nine miles from the ruined plant, said: "I
know when I am fighting a fire on radioactively contaminated
ground – you get the heat just like an ordinary fire, but you get
a tingling sensation too, like pins jumping all over your body. I
don't know how bad it is for me, there's no medical testing
afterwards, we just go and wash."
In March, Chernobyl Forestry Enterprise, a state forestry firm,
was "low on fuel" and firefighters had to resort to using a horse
and cart to fetch water. "Some equipment, like caterpillar trucks,
just sits here," said Pyotr Kova, deputy head of Lubyanka fire
station district.
Dmytro Melnychuk, rector of the national university, said:
"Strontium-90, plutonium, and americium-241 are all extremely
susceptible to upward atmospheric migration and dispersal via heat
from fires. They create problems for firefighters and others who
breathe them in. Radioactive smoke landing on crops … even 150km
or more from the fire can create such concentrations of radiation
in food it will be harmful to eat. Our studies, together with Yale
University, have shown it is imperative we take measures to
control the radiation [in] Chernobyl's forests."
Forest accounts for about 60% of the CEZ's 260,000 hectares
(642,200 acres). The plantations soak up radiation and prevent its
spread to groundwater.
Sergiy Zibtsev, associate professor at the Kiev Institute of
Forestry and Landscape Park Management, said: "Smoke from fires in
2003 … at the former nuclear test site at Semipalatinsk
[Kazakhstan] was detected as far off as Canada, so the potential
for wildfires to spread radioactivity from Chernobyl is a problem
the international community has to take seriously."
Chernobyl's current firefighting protection system includes
watchtower lookouts triangulating wildfires sites by radio. "The
system is effective but very slow," said Boris Danilenko, head of
Chernobyl Forestry Enterprise. "By the time a wildfire is big
enough to see through summer heat haze it is typically half an
acre in size."