Few Chernobyl radiation risks from Russia fires

Fears that fires scorching forests polluted by Chernobyl fallout may propel dangerous amounts of radioactivity into the air are overblown, scientists say, and the actual health risks are very small.

Even firefighters tackling the blazes, which officials say have hit forests in Russia's Bryansk region tainted by radioactive dust from the 1986 Chernobyl reactor disaster, are unlikely to run any added nuclear contamination risks.

The amount of radiation in smoke would be only a fraction of the original fallout, they say.

"Of the total radioactivity in the area, much less than one percent of it will be remobilized," said Jim Smith, an expert on Chernobyl and a specialist in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Britain's University of Portsmouth.

Radioactive contamination in the area has substantially diminished in the almost two and a half decades since explosions at Chernobyl's reactor No. 4 caused the world's worst civil nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986.

"Most of the radioactivity is in the soil, which will not be affected by the fires, and only a small proportion is in the vegetation," Smith said in a telephone interview. "And of that only a very small proportion of that will get re-suspended in the smoke from the fires."

Russia's forest protection agency said on Wednesday that fires covering an area of 39 square kilometers (15 square miles) had been registered in regions with forests polluted with radiation. The regions affected included Bryansk province, which borders Ukraine, southwest of Moscow.

"NEGLIGIBLE" HEALTH RISK

Both France's Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety and Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection said on Thursday that while some radiation was likely to be remobilized in smoke, the health risks were minimal and would have no impact on either Russia or neighboring countries.

Maria Neira, the World Health Organization's director of public health and environment said the WHO had data from controlled burning experiments conducted in the region in recent years and these suggested no reason for concern.

"We know from these experiments that the redistribution and re-suspension of radionuclides (radioactive particles) will be negligible for people's health," she stated.

According to experts, the types of radioactive isotopes that might still be active in the Bryansk area include strontium 90 and caesium 137. These substances have half lives of about 30 years, meaning that only about half the radioactive material emitted by Chernobyl is still around now.

France's Institute for Radiation Protection said there may be a slight increase in radioactivity in the nearby environment due to re-suspension of caesium-137, "but it would be very much lower than the natural radioactivity."

Portsmouth's Smith and Stig Husin, an analyst in emergency preparedness at the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, said the main threat from the fires both locally and nationally in Russia was the choking smoke from forest and peat fires, and the smog which is clouding the air in Moscow -- all of which can cause lung and heart problems.

"I would be much more concerned about the smog in Moscow and the health impacts of that -- not because of radiation but because of people inhaling harmful air pollution," said Smith.

Husin said those living near the Chernobyl-contaminated areas where fires have been reported would be wise to protect themselves by staying inside or wearing masks.

"Naturally it would be good if you are living close to the fires to protect yourself from the smoke itself. If you do protect yourself then naturally you protect yourself from the radioactive substances that may be in the smoke."

Source:
Reuters, "Few Chernobyl radiation risks from Russia fires", accessed August 13, 2010

Fires rage in Russia, death tolls rises to 48

A boat travels along the Moskva River next to the Moscow Kremlin shrouded by heavy smog, August 4, 2010.

President Dmitry Medvedev broke off his summer holiday on Wednesday and flew back to Moscow for emergency talks as the death toll from Russia's deadliest wildfires in nearly four decades hit 48.

Thick clouds of acrid, choking smoke from forest and peat bog fires blanketed the capital. Authorities told residents to stay indoors despite the sweltering heat to avoid concentrations of toxic carbon monoxide well above safe levels.

Keen to stamp his authority on the government's response to the fires -- so far largely handled by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin -- Medvedev sacked several senior navy officers for failing to stop forest fires from ravaging a naval storage base outside Moscow last week and destroying valuable equipment.

"Despite the fact that we asked the Defense Ministry to help with extinguishing fires to help the civil population, in the majority of cases the ministry cannot (even) protect itself," Medvedev told officials in the Kremlin after returning from his Black Sea summer residence at Sochi.

The fires have swept through Russia's tinder-dry forests in the hottest summer since records began 130 years ago, leaving thousands homeless and prompting leaders to declare a state of emergency in seven of the worst hit regions.

Critics say the government has been slow to respond. They also allege that changes to the law rammed through parliament by the Kremlin and the timber lobby in 2006 fatally weakened fire protection in Russia's vast woodlands, the world's biggest.

"The situation with forest fires in the country has on the whole stabilized but remains tense and dangerous," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told officials during a visit to the southern region of Voronezh, one of the worst hit.

MONEY PLEDGE SOOTHES

Putin has promised the state will help rebuild all homes destroyed by the fires and has pledged generous compensation.

The prospect of government cash led a group of women to praise Russia's paramount leader when he visited a local hotel housing 155 people whose homes have burned down.

Residents thanked Putin for offering money and asked eagerly for details of compensation schemes, taking pictures of the premier on mobile phones as he spoke with them.

The visit to Voronezh contrasted sharply with a meeting in Nizhny Novgorod last Friday when villagers berated Putin, demanding immediate action to rebuild their homes.

Weeping women greeted Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as he visited Verkhnyaya Vereya, a village where all 341 homes were burned to the ground and five residents were killed in the blaze.

"We aren't asking for anything out of this world. We are just asking for a guarantee that we will be able to live here by winter," a woman resident said in footage shown on state Channel One television.

The village, one of three hamlets destroyed around Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's fifth-largest city some 300 miles (475

People search for belongings from their burned-out homes in the town of Voronezh, some 500 kilometers south of Moscow, on Saturday. (Mikhail Metzel/Associated Press)

kilometers) east of Moscow, looked like a ghost town coated in gray ash.

"Before winter, each house will be restored," Putin told the distressed crowd. "I promise - the village will be rebuilt.", adding that the standard compensation of 50,000 rubles ($A1834) per household for loss of possessions would be increased to 200,000 rubles ($A7341) per resident.

Putin flew into the village of Verkhnyaya Vereya on Friday morning after more than 500 residents were left homeless by a fire.

In characteristic strongman style, he was shown facing residents, his sleeves rolled up and meeting with Emergency Minister Sergei Shoigu, where he ordered officials "not to get tied up in red tape".

Television reports showed a central street with all the houses razed to brick foundations and evacuated residents sheltering in a children's summer camp.

"I was at home, I couldn't breathe, the houses were burning, and I couldn't see anything," Valentina Britova, an elderly woman in a headscarf, told the Rossiya television channel.

Some 170,000 people including troops were battling at least 520 fires raging on Wednesday over an area of 1,885 sq km, the Emergencies Ministry said.

The wildfires are Russia's deadliest since 1972, when at least 104 people died in Moscow region alone in forest and peat fires that destroyed an area of 100,000 square km of the then Soviet Union, the ministry said.

A record heatwave has engulfed central parts of European Russia since mid June, ruining much of the wheat crop in some areas and raising fears that a poor harvest in the world's third largest wheat exporter could push up global food prices.

The economy showed the first signs of damage from the heatwave, with the services sector expanding in July at its slowest pace in four months.

German carmaker Volkswagen said that due to smoke from the fires, it had temporarily halted production at a factory in Kaluga, southwest of Moscow, that produced 48,500 cars last year.

MOSCOW SMOKE

Moscow, a city of 10.5 million, was shrouded in acrid smoke.

"The pollution is at the worst level since 2002 and is approaching those levels," Alexei Popikov, an expert on air quality at Moscow's pollution monitoring agency, stated.

The carbon monoxide count in Moscow soared to 5.7 times safe levels overnight and Russia's top lung doctor warned residents are inhaling the equivalent of 40 cigarettes every few hours.

City dwellers complained of waking with headaches and sore throats. Shops have run out of fans and some residents have taken to wearing masks over their mouths in the street.

The forest fires and scorching temperatures have complicated operations for Russia's large and aging nuclear sector.

A reactor at the Novovoronezh power station was shut down on Wednesday because transformers broke due to high air temperatures. Other reactors at the station were working normally, state nuclear corporation Rosatom said.

More than 2,100 firefighters were battling fires near a secretive nuclear research center at Sarov in Nizhny Novgorod province, where the first Soviet atom and hydrogen bombs were designed, about 350 km (220 miles) east of Moscow.

Source:
Reuters, "Fires rage in Russia, death toll rises to 48", accessed August 4, 2010
CBS News, "Russia Mobilizes Army To Fight Fires That Kill 25", accessed August 4, 2010

Scientist says hundreds may die as smog blankets Moscow

A prominent scientist said hundreds of people could die as smog from peat fires blanketed a sweltering Moscow for a second day on Tuesday.

Moscow region chief Boris Gromov asked Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to allocate 25 billion roubles ($827 million) to fight the fires smoldering in the forests around Moscow.

Alexei Yablokov, an internationally renowned biologist who runs Russia's Green Party, said air pollution caused by the smog's high amount of carbon dioxide could kill hundreds more people than usual in the Moscow region.

"There will be at least 100 additional deaths per day this time round," Yablokov stated, referring to the last such smog cloud in 2002 in which he calculated 600 people had died each week.

The Moscow government agency overseeing air pollution, Mosekonomonitoring, said the levels of carbon monoxide in the air on Tuesday shot up by 20-30 percent more than normal levels. (Left: Kremlin barely shows through smog)

Russia's senior public health official suggested on Tuesday employers free their staff while the thick smog and record-breaking heat in the Russian capital surged.

"Employers, if there is a possibility, could allow people to not come to work," Gennady Onishchenko, head of Russia's health

protection agency, told Interfax news agency.

Peat, used in the past to produce heat and electricity, smolders deep underground in winters and summers. Gromov said the only solution to the fires was to pour water over deposits.

"According to preliminary estimates, only in one district where fires are now most severe, over 4.5 billion roubles is needed. We have five such districts," Gromov told Putin during an emergency video conference.

Putin said he would ask the emergency and economy ministries to examine the request.

The emergencies ministry said that in the last 24 hours there had appeared 58 new fires in the Moscow region, 30 of them at peat deposits.

Source:
Reuters,,"Scientist says hundreds may die as smog blankets Moscow", accessed July 28, 2010