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Thursday, March 24th, 2022

Crisis at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Escalates as Forest Fires Spread

Author:     Molly Taft
Source:     Gizmodo
Publication Date:     23 March 2022 | 12:55 p.m.
 Link: Crisis at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Escalates as Forest Fires Spread
Stephan:   Not much has been said about Chernobyl, now under Russian control, but I saw this report and realized that this may be a first account describing what could become a vast disaster. If radioactivity is released for some reason at the damaged nuclear plant the winds could blow lethal radioactivity over Russia and other countries endangering until millions.
An operator’s arm-chair covered with plastic sits in an empty control room of the 3rd reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, in Chernobyl, Ukraine, on April 20, 2018. 
Credit: Efrem Lukatsky / Associated Press

Ukraine’s parliament said in a statement Monday that satellite imagery had revealed at least seven fires in the forested area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. These fires are within 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) of the defunct plant itself, making them particularly “dangerous,” according to the statement. The parliament said Ukraine firefighters have been unable to beat back the blazes due to Russian presence in the region.

The parliamentary statement blamed Russian shelling as a likely cause of the fires’ outbreak. Russian forces moved into the region around the power plant in early March and have occupied it since, forcing some staff to do their jobs for three weeks at gunpoint as hostages and stoking fears that important safety protocols will be neglected. On Wednesday, the Ukrainian government said that Russian forces had destroyed a lab at the site dedicated to monitoring radioactive waste.

Unfortunately, forest fires in Chernobyl aren’t a new […]

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