Crisis at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Escalates as Forest Fires Spread

Ukraine's parliament said in a statement Monday that satellite imagery had revealed

The parliamentary statement blamed Russian shelling as a likely cause of do their jobs for three weeks at gunpoint as hostages and stoking fears that important safety protocols will be neglected sai that Russian forces had destroyed a lab at the site dedicated to monitoring radioactive waste.

Unfortunately, forest fires in Chernobyl aren't caught , when hot and dry temperatures more than a week for firefighters to put out those April 2020 fires wave of blazes that swept Eurasia, including parts of Siberia , amid soaring temperatures that spring.

Separate NASA imagery reviewed by experts who spoke to the Washington Post confirmed at least three fires burning in the area. Timothy Mousseau, a professor of biological sciences at the University of South Carolina, told the Post that it looked like at least one large fire had been burning for several days, probably fed by "dead organic matter" from previous fires; the fire, Mousseau said, did appear to be dying down.

After the deadly nuclear meltdown at the plant in 1986, opened up to tourists and research inside the area is ongoing , it remains largely restricted to protect public health and to including dead trees —available as wildfire fodder.

Any big disturbances in this exclusion zone radiation levels in the exclusion zone were measured at 16 times sent radiation particles —albeit at very low levels—from Chernobyl across national borders toward

Fires and combat can also threaten the safe management of got within 120 feet (36.5 meters) of a waste storage facility. Experts have also expressed concern that unprotected fuel at the bottom of the defunct reactor could disturbed

"There is no data on the current state of radiation pollution of the exclusion zone's environment, which makes it impossible to adequately respond to threats," Energoatom, Ukraine's nuclear company, said in a statement Monday , adding that forest fires in the spring and summer posed a particular threat. "Radiation levels in the exclusion zone and beyond, including not only Ukraine, but also other countries, could significantly worsen."