Reports: Wildfires Closing in to Chernobyl Nuclear Plant
Forest fires that have been raging for several days in northern Ukraine are now no more than a few kilometers from the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear plant, reports say.
Tour operator Yaroslav Emelianenko said one had reached the abandoned town of Pripyat, which used to serve the plant. He said it was now just 2km (1.24 miles) from where the most dangerous waste from the plant was stored, the BBC reports.
Greenpeace said the fires were much bigger than the authorities realized.
The NGO's Russia branch, quoted by Reuters, said the largest fire covered 34,000 hectares, while a second fire just a kilometer from the former plant was 12,000 hectares in area.
Mr. Emelianenko also said that if the fire engulfed Pripyat it would be an economic disaster, as supervised tourist visits provided valuable revenue.
Police said the fire had been burning since the weekend of 4 April, after a man set fire to dry grass near the exclusion zone. It has since moved closer to the nuclear plant.
More than 300 firefighters with dozens of pieces of special hardware are reportedly working at the site, while six helicopters and planes are attempting to extinguish the fire from above.
"Firefighters have struggled to control wildfires burning through the radioactive forest in the abandoned territory around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, where radiation levels are considerably lower than they were immediately after the 1986 incident, but still pose risks.
"Radiation readings near the wildfires, where smoke is swirling about, have been elevated, with the wind blowing toward rural areas of Russia and Belarus for most of the past week. The wind shifted Friday toward Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, but authorities say the radiation level is still normal in the city, whose population is about three million," The New York Times has reported.
"Already in lockdown because of the coronavirus, Ukraine is now also contending with fires in the post-apocalyptic landscape of the Chernobyl zone," reads the article by the NY Times.