Scary stuff. Obviously it won't be as bad as the '86 event, but it could ignite (no pun intended) some severe health risks on top of the already poisonous smog.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/au … -radiationGuardian wrote:
Forest wardens today stepped up patrols in the Chernobyl fallout zone as a leading ecologist warned that fires could send radioactive particles as far as Moscow.
Around 160,000 emergency personnel are battling 600 wildfires across Russia, 290 of which ignited in the last 24 hours.
Greenpeace said at least 20 fires – three of them in a highly contaminated forest area – had broken out in the Bryansk region, bordering northern Ukraine, in recent days.
Bryansk was part of the zone sprayed with a plume of radioactive isotopes caesium-137 and strontium-90 when the Chernobyl power plant's fourth reactor exploded in 1986.
Alexei Yablokov, a member of the Academy of Sciences, warned that winds could spread contaminants embedded in trees and plants as they succumbed to the inferno.
