A major wildfire is sweeping through the Chernobyl nuclear disaster area. The authorities have deployed dozens of fire trucks as firefighting aircraft bombard the radioactive exclusion zone with massive amounts of water. The fire inside the Chernobyl ‘dead zone,’ which is now part of Ukraine, started on Tuesday morning, when dry grass was ignited, local emergency services said in a statement. The wildfire subsequently reached a forest, where up to 10 hectares (24 acres) are now in flames. Some 29 vehicles and 126 personnel have been dispatched at the scene, with several planes and helicopters dropping water from the sky on the area engulfed by wildfire. The zone saw another large blaze last year, which scorched 25 hectares (60 acres) of land.
RT 6th June 2018 read more »
More than 30 years after the Chernobyl disaster, milk in some parts of Ukraine still has radioactivity levels up to five times the official safe limit, new research suggests. Scientists sampled cows’ milk from private farms and homes in the Rivne region, about 125 miles from the site of the catastrophic explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986. They found levels of radioactive caesium in milk above Ukraine’s safe limit for adults of 100 Becquerel per litre (Bq/L) at six of 14 settlements studied, and above the children’s limit of 40 Bq/L at eight sites.
Independent 8th June 2018 read more »
Scientists from the Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter and the Ukrainian Institute of Agricultural Radiology sampled cow’s milk from private farms and homes in the Rivne region, about 200km from the site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant explosion in 1986. They found levels of radioactive caesium in milk above Ukraine’s safe limit for adults of 100 Becquerel per litre (Bq/L) at six of 14 settlements studied, and above the children’s limit of 40 Bq/L at eight sites. The highest levels found were about 500 Bq/L – five times over the limit for adults and more than 12 times that for children.
Exeter University 8th June 2018 read more »
