Russia insists radiation normal in Chernobyl-hit forests

Russia yesterday insisted that radiation was normal in regions contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster amid concerns forest fires could send a cloud of radioactive particles as far as Moscow.

“We have a full network of monitoring and we carry out frequent observations,” the deputy head of Russian state weather forecaster Rosgidromet Valery Dyadyuchenko told the Interfax news agency.

“A worsening of the radiation situation and a growth in the background radiation as a result of a transfer of materials from the fires have not been recorded anywhere in Russia,” he said.

A two hectare peat bog fire is burning 60 kilometres south of Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, but the situation poses no danger, a Ukrainian official said.

Russia’s state forest watchdog on Wednesday admitted wildfires hit hundreds of hectares of land in the western Bryansk region contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, raising fears that buried radioactive particles could be released into the air.

The forest watchdog quoted data from August 6 but emergency ministry officials denied there were any fires currently burning in the area.