Zeno Swijtink
08-15-2010, 08:31 AM
Science 13 August 2010:
Vol. 329. no. 5993, pp. 738 - 739
DOI: 10.1126/science.329.5993.738-b
NEWS OF THE WEEK
ENVIRONMENT:
Russia's Forest Fires Ignite Concerns About Chornobyl's Legacy
Dan Charles*
https://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol329/issue5993/images/medium/329_738b_F1.gif
Hot zone. Fires ripping through Russia's forests (left) sparked fears of a blaze among Chornobyl's radiation-contaminated tress.
CREDIT: AP IMAGES
[Larger version of this image]
In the midst of an unprecedented heat wave this summer, Russia has been scrambling to respond to a devastating epidemic of forest fires, some of which have threatened nuclear research and weapon facilities. Officials in Moscow last week warned of a further nightmarish scenario: Fires could spread to neighboring Ukraine, to its forests contaminated by the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear accident, sending radioactive smoke high into the air and downwind.
As Science went to press, this had not happened, but several forestry experts in Ukraine and abroad say a catastrophic fire will eventually break out in the forests of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, which covers 260,000 hectares—unless Ukrainian officials take action to reduce the growing risks of a conflagration. The Chornobyl forest "is ready to burn, now," says Chadwick Oliver, director of the Yale Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry. And a really big fire, he says, "can volatilize organic matter and move particles hundreds of kilometers."
Because the forest is contaminated, no one is managing it, thinning out trees, or harvesting those that are dying. It is even illegal to take lumber out of the Exclusion Zone; if trees are cut, they just stay in piles on the ground. On one recent visit to Chornobyl, Sergiy Zibtsev of Ukraine's National University of Life and Environmental Sciences in Kiev says he discovered "a really dangerous situation": a huge area, inaccessible by road, filled with downed, dead trees.
Although even the most ferocious fire in the exclusion zone would release only a tiny fraction of the radiation from the reactor accident, firefighters would face the clearest danger, mainly from the risk of inhaling particles of plutonium left behind by the nuclear reactor accident. "I worry about them, very much," says Zibtsev, who has met the region's firefighters during his frequent trips to Chornobyl. Villages or cities downwind would not have to be evacuated, according to a computer simulation of a "worst-case" conflagration carried out by forest specialist Aaron Hohl of Humboldt State University in California. But such a fire might cause mass panic and force many farmers to discard contaminated crops.
Hohl presented his preliminary results, which are currently going through peer review, at a conference last October in Kiev. Organizers of the conference, including Zibtsev, Oliver, and Johann Goldammer of the Global Fire Monitoring Center at the University of Freiburg in Germany, had hoped the gathering would win the attention of Ukrainian officials and persuade them to put more money—Oliver says $20 million a year would be adequate—into preventing, detecting, and fighting fires near Chornobyl.
But top Ukrainian officials failed to attend—and since the country held elections in February, many key positions responsible for the exclusion zone have remained vacant. Zibtsev and others are still trying to lobby government officials, "but it's very difficult due to this political situation." Other problems in Ukraine seem more urgent than a decaying forest, he says: "Until it burns, they will not do something, I think."
Goldammer sees the Chornobyl zone as an example of a wider problem. Many forests in areas of past or potential military conflict, he says, cannot be easily managed, and thus are vulnerable to fires, because they harbor land mines, bombs, or other unexploded ordnance. Last October's Kiev conference, in fact, included presentations on explosive contamination of forests across a broad swath of southeastern Europe and Asia, from Croatia to Armenia. One Turkish delegate reported that when fires break out along his country's heavily mined borders with Syria or Iraq, "what we do is, we do nothing." This hands-off attitude could lead to cross-border fires and international conflict, he said.
In a statement released after the conference, participants called for new international efforts to prevent and fight fires in contaminated areas. The recommendations were vague and have had little impact so far, but Goldammer insisted that the Kiev meeting was "an important first step." Never before, he said, had forest managers shared so much information about dangers that were long considered military secrets. Russia's fires may help bring those dangers to wider attention.
Vol. 329. no. 5993, pp. 738 - 739
DOI: 10.1126/science.329.5993.738-b
NEWS OF THE WEEK
ENVIRONMENT:
Russia's Forest Fires Ignite Concerns About Chornobyl's Legacy
Dan Charles*
https://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol329/issue5993/images/medium/329_738b_F1.gif
Hot zone. Fires ripping through Russia's forests (left) sparked fears of a blaze among Chornobyl's radiation-contaminated tress.
CREDIT: AP IMAGES
[Larger version of this image]
In the midst of an unprecedented heat wave this summer, Russia has been scrambling to respond to a devastating epidemic of forest fires, some of which have threatened nuclear research and weapon facilities. Officials in Moscow last week warned of a further nightmarish scenario: Fires could spread to neighboring Ukraine, to its forests contaminated by the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear accident, sending radioactive smoke high into the air and downwind.
As Science went to press, this had not happened, but several forestry experts in Ukraine and abroad say a catastrophic fire will eventually break out in the forests of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, which covers 260,000 hectares—unless Ukrainian officials take action to reduce the growing risks of a conflagration. The Chornobyl forest "is ready to burn, now," says Chadwick Oliver, director of the Yale Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry. And a really big fire, he says, "can volatilize organic matter and move particles hundreds of kilometers."
Because the forest is contaminated, no one is managing it, thinning out trees, or harvesting those that are dying. It is even illegal to take lumber out of the Exclusion Zone; if trees are cut, they just stay in piles on the ground. On one recent visit to Chornobyl, Sergiy Zibtsev of Ukraine's National University of Life and Environmental Sciences in Kiev says he discovered "a really dangerous situation": a huge area, inaccessible by road, filled with downed, dead trees.
Although even the most ferocious fire in the exclusion zone would release only a tiny fraction of the radiation from the reactor accident, firefighters would face the clearest danger, mainly from the risk of inhaling particles of plutonium left behind by the nuclear reactor accident. "I worry about them, very much," says Zibtsev, who has met the region's firefighters during his frequent trips to Chornobyl. Villages or cities downwind would not have to be evacuated, according to a computer simulation of a "worst-case" conflagration carried out by forest specialist Aaron Hohl of Humboldt State University in California. But such a fire might cause mass panic and force many farmers to discard contaminated crops.
Hohl presented his preliminary results, which are currently going through peer review, at a conference last October in Kiev. Organizers of the conference, including Zibtsev, Oliver, and Johann Goldammer of the Global Fire Monitoring Center at the University of Freiburg in Germany, had hoped the gathering would win the attention of Ukrainian officials and persuade them to put more money—Oliver says $20 million a year would be adequate—into preventing, detecting, and fighting fires near Chornobyl.
But top Ukrainian officials failed to attend—and since the country held elections in February, many key positions responsible for the exclusion zone have remained vacant. Zibtsev and others are still trying to lobby government officials, "but it's very difficult due to this political situation." Other problems in Ukraine seem more urgent than a decaying forest, he says: "Until it burns, they will not do something, I think."
Goldammer sees the Chornobyl zone as an example of a wider problem. Many forests in areas of past or potential military conflict, he says, cannot be easily managed, and thus are vulnerable to fires, because they harbor land mines, bombs, or other unexploded ordnance. Last October's Kiev conference, in fact, included presentations on explosive contamination of forests across a broad swath of southeastern Europe and Asia, from Croatia to Armenia. One Turkish delegate reported that when fires break out along his country's heavily mined borders with Syria or Iraq, "what we do is, we do nothing." This hands-off attitude could lead to cross-border fires and international conflict, he said.
In a statement released after the conference, participants called for new international efforts to prevent and fight fires in contaminated areas. The recommendations were vague and have had little impact so far, but Goldammer insisted that the Kiev meeting was "an important first step." Never before, he said, had forest managers shared so much information about dangers that were long considered military secrets. Russia's fires may help bring those dangers to wider attention.