Russian academician sees nothing wrong with Chernobyl fires
Fires in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant do not threaten either Belarus or Ukraine.
This was stated by the head of the Institute for Problems of Safe Development of Nuclear Energy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Leonid Bolshov, during a press conference in Moscow, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“We analyzed Ukrainian data that was transferred to the IAEA in April. There are absolutely insignificant levels for both Russia and Kyiv, and in general for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant site. The image of radioactivity that rises with fire and rushes to populated areas is scary, but when you look at the numbers, it turns out that fear is completely misplaced,” the scientist noted.
He said that his institute studied the problem of pollution several years ago during fires in contaminated areas of the Bryansk region.
“And as an extreme case, they assumed that the entire Bryansk forest burned down, and raised into the air all the radioactivity that had settled there. However, such a completely extreme scenario did not pose any noticeable damage to the surrounding area. The point here is that the general level of pollution that exists today in the Bryansk and Ukrainian forests is not so high - several curies per square kilometer. This gives the population an additional annual dose of one millisievert per year. This is exactly the level that is allowed by both our and international standards,” Bolshov said.
Russian academic sees nothing wrong with the Chernobyl fires.