Chernobyl wildfires risk ‘catastrophic’ radiation release across vast swathes of Europe
THE WILDFIRES raging around Russian-occupied Chernobyl risk the "catastrophic" release of radionuclides presently contained in the forests surrounding the plant - with the potential to distribute radioactive material across vast swathes of Europe.
14:20, Wed, Mar 23, 2022 | UPDATED: 14:31, Wed, Mar 23, 2022
There are precedents for the present forest fires around Ukraine — with serious outbreaks have occurred in the area in 2002, 2008, 2010 and most recently in 2020.
Back in 2015, chemist Dr Nikolaos Evangeliou of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research and his colleagues conducted a study into the first three of these fires.
For Professor Mousseau, these fires “serve as a warning of where these contaminants can go. Should there be a larger fire, quite a bit more could end up on populated areas.”
And unlike with the present fires — which are said to be burning unchecked — those in 2010 and 2020 were put out, Dr Keeton said, “just before reaching or burning extensively in the Chernobyl forests".
According to Dr Evangeliou and colleagues, “The cumulative amount of ¹³⁷Cs re-deposited over Europe [by the three fires they studied] was equivalent to eight percent [0.5 PBq] of that deposited following the initial Chernobyl disaster.
“However, a large amount of ¹³⁷Cs still remains in these forests, which could be remobilized along with a large number of other dangerous, long-lived, refractory radionuclides.”
Refractory materials are those that are resistant to decomposition by heat, pressure, or chemical attack — and tend to retain their form and strength under extreme temperatures.
Specifically, the team estimated that of the 85 petabecquerels (PBq) of radioactive caesium released during the 1986 meltdown, some 2–8 PBq may still reside in the upper layers of soil within the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
It should be noted that there is a chance that these figures are underestimates — with some experts, including radioactivity consultant and former head of the Government’s radiation risk committee Ian Fairlie, havd warned that the half-life of caesium-137 may be longer than estimated in Dr Evangeliou and his colleagues’ calculations....
In 2002, radioactive smoke ended up as far south as Turkey and as west as Italy and Scandinavia (Image: Evangeliou et al. / Ecological Monographs)
Dr Keeton said the 2010 fires were put out 'just before reaching or burning extensively'
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