No rise in Chernobyl radiation levels: Ukraine

KIEV: Ukrainian government agencies on Monday denied an official’s claim that a forest fire in the Chernobyl exclusion zone caused a spike in radiation levels.

Firefighters are battling a blaze that broke out at the weekend in the zone around the ruined Chernobyl reactor that exploded in 1986 in the world’s worst nuclear accident. On Sunday, Yegor Firsov, head of Ukraine’s state ecological inspection service, said in a Facebook post that radiation levels at the centre of the fire were higher than normal. He included a video of a Geiger counter showing radiation levels 16 times higher than normal.

Ukraine’s emergency service said that no increase in radiation in the air had been detected. “There is no spike in radiation levels,” said Olga Kozak, a spokeswoman for the emergency service, which has deployed planes, a helicopter and more than 100 firefighters to fight the blaze. Ukraine’s government agency for managing the Chernobyl exclusion zone also reported that normal levels of gamma radiation “were not exceeded” in the area of the fire.

Later, Firsov withdrew his claim, writing on Facebook that man-made radionuclides were not detected at the site of the fire. He added that the fire in the exclusion zone did not affect the radiation situation in Kiev and the suburbs, refuting his own statement.

Police said the blaze broke out after a man set fire to dry grass near the Chernobyl exclusion zone and flames spread through the forest Fires occur regularly in the forests near the Chernobyl power plant.