• Ukraine: A large fire reaches the gates of Chernobyl and threatens to spread nuclear waste
  • Accident: Chernobyl, life without us

The fire that threatened the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant is under control, according to Ukrainian authorities. The emergency services said Tuesday that there are still some parts with flames in the forest, but these are fires that are no longer capable of progressing.

Since the fires started on April 4, it has been feared that the flames could threaten the facilities and deposits that remain from the nuclear disaster produced in 1986. The outbreaks seemed under control last week, but during the weekend they were rekindled. Greenpeace Russia alerted yesterday Monday that the fire was only one kilometer from the old nuclear power plant.

Following the serious nuclear accident, Chernobyl continued to generate power until the plant's last operational reactor was finally closed in 2000. After the disaster, the Soviet authorities created an exclusion area around the power plant, an irregular circle with a radius of about 29 kilometers, fenced with barbed wire.

Over the past week there have been fears that the fire could threaten the plant and even spread clouds of radioactive chemicals that could reach the capital, 94 kilometers away, Kiev. The waste is contained in reinforced concrete capsules several meters thick. They were built to safeguard the highly radioactive waste that was produced during the work of the 'liquidators' to appease the consequences of the plant accident.

"The spent fuel tanks stored at the site are capable of resisting a fire for hours and also the forest ends before reaching the nuclear power plant , so, hopefully, the fire will not reach the facilities," explained this Tomorrow to THE WORLD, Andrew Leatherbarrow, author of the book 'Chernobyl 01:23:40' (Duomo editions). "The waste cemeteries in the area are also potentially vulnerable, but they are covered with concrete, so they should be safe," he adds. If the fire were to reach the Podlisni deposits, a highly radioactive waste storage site, "it could be a big problem," admits the British expert.

"We are trying to completely stop the spread of various outbreaks of the fire," reported Volodimir Demchuk, a head of the Ukrainian Emergency Service. Radiation in the Ukrainian capital environment "is within normal limits," he said in statements released by the BBC. Leatherbarrow believes that "radiation levels are high, but not close to being harmful."

The devastation is in the environment of the plant. The fire has already reached Pripiat, the town where the families of the plant's workers lived when the fourth reactor broke down on that fateful April 26, 1986 and is now a ghost town. The devastation of the surroundings has been evident in photographs of helicopters showing hectares of burned land where there used to be forests.

Leatherbarrow is primarily concerned with "the abandoned city of Pripiat, which is almost certain to burn entirely." The reason is that, unlike Chernobyl, there is not a large open space around it to contain the advance of the fire: "It will be a real tragedy for everyone if that happens, and also for the Ukrainian Government, as it provides important income for the tourism ". In 2018, more than 70,000 people visited the deserted city of Pripiat. That number was even higher last year, after the success of an HBO miniseries about the disaster.

Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky said on Monday that he was "carefully monitoring" the situation and praised the emergency services for their "courage". After the 1986 experience, many Ukrainians have distrusted the official version these days. Yaroslav Yemelianenko, head of the Chernobyl Tour Operators Association, has criticized these days that " no one can enter the area of ​​fire, including the media ." While the local authorities said that everything was under control, Yemelianenko denounced that "the fire continued to invade new areas." Zelensky promised yesterday that the government would tell the truth about the scope of the problem.

During the last night the fight against fire was intense. 200 discharges of 460 tons of water were carried out. More than 400 people worked on tasks in the exclusion zone, including three planes and three helicopters, the Fire Department of the Emergency Ministry reported Monday night.

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