KIEV/MOSCOW (Reuters) ― A huge forest fire in Ukraine that has been raging for more than a week is now just one kilometer (0.6 miles) from the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant and poses a radiation risk, Greenpeace Russia warned on Monday, citing satellite images.
Ukraine’s Emergency Situations Service said it was still fighting the fires, but that the situation was under control.
Video footage shot by Reuters on Sunday showed plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky and trees still ablaze, with firefighters in helicopters trying to put out the fires.
Aerial images of the 30-kilometer (19-mile) exclusion zone around the plant, site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986, showed scorched, blackened earth and the charred stumps of still smouldering trees.
The Emergency Situations Service said radiation levels in the exclusion zone had not changed and those in nearby Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, “did not exceed natural background levels.”
Wildfires that have been b