International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day 2020: Fires, Smog and Pandemic

The United Nations has proclaimed April 26 International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day. The day was first observed in 2016, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the 1986 nuclear disaster.

The 34th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 2020 brings new challenges. With Ukraine still on lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, massive wildfires, including one within the Chernobyl exclusion zone, sent clouds of potentially radioactive smog into Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv —the same day an unusual sand storm hit the city. Kyiv ranked first in the Air Quality Ranking as the world’s most polluted city a few times in April.

The Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), France, offers a video simulation of the Chernobyl tragedy on YouTube. IRSN is concerned about the loss of electrical power as the main risk associated with forest fires. For on-site storage facilities, for radioactive materials and the sarcophagus of Unit 4, the total losses of electrical power which could be linked, for example, to fires in progress, are part of the risks which have been taken into account by safety studies prior to their design.

Yegor Firsov, head of Ukraine’s state ecological inspection service, posted a video with a Geiger counter showing radiation at 16 times above normal. The fire had spread to about 100 hectares of forest.

As of Saturday, April 25, at 11 a.m., locating the extent of forest fires continues in six forestry areas of the Chernobyl exclusion zone and the zone of unconditional (mandatory) resettlement: Lubianske, Dytiatkivske, Kotovske, Denysovytske, Korohodske, and Paryshivske.

Photo: the State Emergency Service of Ukraine

Director of Emergency Response Department of the State Emergency Service (SES) of Ukraine Volodymyr Demchuk informed that a fire close to the village of Rozsokhy in Dytiatkivskyi forestry in Chernobyl area has been contained in the morning of April 24. “During 24 hrs the engineer vehicles created about 100 km (860 km in total) of fire trails and roads. More than 1050 persons and 250 vehicles, including more than 1000 personnel and 240 vehicles (including 3 helicopters) from the SESU have been engaged to fire extinguishing in the Exclusion Zone”, – he added.

Firemen are continuing to extinguish wildfire in three hotspots in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. “Teams of the State Emergency Service are assisting the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management in fighting fires in the Lubyanske, Paryshivske, Dytiatkivske, and Denysovytske forestry areas. Emphasis is put on containing three hotspots (the village of Rozsokha, the village of Kryva Hora, and the village Rudky – Buryakivka), where tree stumps, leftover wood, and peat bogs are smoldering in wildfire-stricken zones,” the agency said in a statement published on its website. “Engineering vehicles have created 640 kilometers of fire barriers,” the statement said.

The newspaper “KyivPost” reports that thrill-seekers inspired by a Soviet-era science fiction novel have been blamed for wildfires near the Chernobyl nuclear power station. Yaroslav Yemelyanenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian government, suspects that a group of illegal visitors calling themselves “stalkers” were behind the blaze in the exclusion zone set up around Chernobyl after its catastrophic meltdown in the 1980s.

Reuters cites the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) saying that radiation from fires that have torn through forests around Ukraine’s defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant poses “no risk to human health”, based on data provided by Ukraine.