A quarter-century after the Chernobyl meltdown, forests surrounding the Ukrainian nuclear power plant still are soaked with radiation. Now a consortium of scientists is warning that a catastrophic wildfire could release radioactive particles from the trees, and it is urging that more money be spent immediately on forest management to avert a new disaster.
Forests cover about 60 percent of the land in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, the 18-mile-radius ring around the plant where access remains restricted. Cesium and other radioactive materials released after the reactor accident—which occurred 25 years ago Tuesday — are locked up in trees, mainly in the needles and bark of Scots pines.
But since 1992, the Guardian reports, there have been more than 1,000 wildfires inside the exclusion zone. If there is a high-intensity wildfire, scientists fear that the trees will release radioactive smoke.
“The forests have been crowded and untended, and they could very well go up in a catastrophic fire similar to our Western fires,” Chad Oliver, a forestry professor at Yale University who has visited the forest, told NPR.
To combat the wildfire threat, scientists from the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Yale and the United Nations’ Global Fire Monitoring Center are calling on the Ukrainian government to approve a $13.5 million program that would include an automated fire detection and monitoring system and new firefighting and forestry equipment.
Chernobyl’s current firefighting protection system includes watchtower lookouts tracking wildfires sites by radio. “The system is effective but very slow,” said Boris Danilenko, head of Chernobyl Forestry Enterprise, a state forestry firm.
Oliver said the main risk from a catastrophic wildfire in the exclusion zone is that firefighters would inhale “quite concentrated radioactive smoke.” But Sergiy Zibtsev, associate professor at the Kiev Institute of Forestry and Landscape Park Management, noted that smoke from wildfires at a former nuclear test site in 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.”
As a parent, I am curious as to what the risk are to my children when this smoke mixes into the atmosphere. I mean, what are the respiratory effects over long term exposure? Will it fall to the ground via rain or follow a convection pattern. I fear this is a serious issue that is not discussed on my side of the planet. Nor are we educated in our schools incase we are faced to with no other option but to face a nuclear fallout.
I would like some information on the issue besides what is produced on the net. i dont feel the world knows about the issues subsidin still due to this disaster.
Sincerely, The Richards family
Rochelle, Illinois, USA