Firefighters just managed to contain a massive wildfire that threatened to reach the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear site. Here's what it looked like at its worst.
- A forest fire that had come dangerously close to the defunct, radioactive Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant has been mostly contained, officials said Tuesday.
- The fire in northern Ukraine had been burning for more than week. A 27-year-old man is believed to have started the blaze deliberately.
- More than 300 firefighters scrambled to contain the blaze, and environmental activists were worried that the fire would cause a radiation risk.
- State emergency services said the fire had largely been contained, with a few remaining "hot spots" near the plant yet to be extinguished.
- Dramatic images and maps below show just how close the fire was to the nuclear reactor.
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A forest fire in northern Ukraine that had come dangerously close to the abandoned Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant has been largely contained, state emergency services announced Tuesday.
The fire had been burning for more than a week, leaving environmental activists fearing another nuclear risk. The Chernobyl plant is still radioactive.
Dramatic satellite images released by NASA showed just how close the fire was getting to the radioactive site of the 1986 disaster.
Here's what the fire looked like and how close it got to the reactor.
Read the original article on InsiderToday, people are still forbidden to live within 18 miles (30 km) of the power station but supervised tours still attract thousands of tourists every year. A tour guide warned of economic fallout from the forest fire.
Emelianenko, the tour guide, warned there would be an economic disaster if the entire town of Pripyat started burning because of the revenue that the site attracts from tourism every year, the BBC reported.
In 2019, the success of HBO's award-winning mini-series about the disaster attracted 100,000 visitors to the site.
The sudden flock of tourists prompted the writer of the series to ask people to "respect" the site after influencers posted photos of themselves posing at the site.
Pripyat and the Chernobyl nuclear site had been abandoned since 1986, when the plant's No. 4 reactor exploded and caused one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.
The explosion sent a cloud of radioactive fallout across Russia and Europe, and thousands of people in the immediate surrounding area were forced to evacuate.
While it is unclear exactly how many people died from illness caused by the toxic explosion, a recent BBC investigation estimated the number is close to 4,000.
But after days of fighting the fire, there has been significant progress. On Tuesday, state emergency services said the blaze had been largely contained, though some "hot spots" still have to be cleared out.
"There is no open fire anymore," Ukraine's Interior Ministry said in a statement to Reuters on the morning of April 14.
There is, however, still still "a slight smoldering of the forest floor," the statement added.
Volodymyr Demchuk, a senior official from Ukraine's emergency service, told the BBC: "We are still trying to stop the spread of several hot spots of fire."
Source: Reuters
On Monday, Greenpeace Russia warned that the fire could pose a huge radiation risk if it reached the toxic site.
Rashid Alimov, head of energy projects at Greenpeace Russia, told Reuters that the blaze combined with strong winds could disperse radionuclides — tiny atoms that emit radiation.
But the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Service said radiation levels in the exclusion zone had not changed.
It also added that all radiation levels in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital — and the closest major city to the fire — were normal. The service added that people should not listen to "apocalyptic messages," The Guardian reported.
Ukrainian police blamed a 27-year-old local resident for starting the fire deliberately. According to Reuters, he has confessed to starting fires "for fun."
This April 10 photo, taken from the roof of the Chernobyl plant itself, shows just how close the fire had reached.
Aerial photos of the fire showed large flames and thick smoke rising from the 19-mile (30-km) exclusion zone.
More than 300 firefighters were deployed to extinguish the fire, and an additional six helicopters and planes had been battling it from above.
Source: BBC
One fire had even reached Pripyat, the ghost town located 2 km (1.24 miles) from the defunct No. 4 nuclear reactor, said tour operator Yaroslav Emelianenko.
No. 4 nuclear reactor is where the initial 1986 explosion occurred, and where the most dangerous radioactive waste from the plant was stored, Reuters reported.
Rashid Alimov, head of energy projects at Greenpeace Russia, told the news agency: "A fire approaching a nuclear or hazardous radiation facility is always a risk."
Source: Reuters
The fire quickly spread to surrounding forests in the wider area, as can be seen here in an April 6 satellite image taken by NASA. The Chernobyl nuclear site is circled, while the active fires (at the time) are marked in red dots.
The largest fire had reached 34,400 hectares on April 13, Reuters reported, citing Greenpeace Russia.
On April 4, a fire started in a forest in the western part of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation — or exclusion zone — in northern Ukraine.
The exclusion zone is an officially-designated area surrounding the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster.
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