Smoke from the burning forests near Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear plant will not spread to Romania in the next 72 hours, said the Romanian Environment Minister Gratiela Gavrilescu after a meeting of the Emergency Ministerial Committee organized on April 29.

Ukrainian authorities managed to extinguish the fire that spread over 320 hectares, she added.

“We ordered, within the Committee, a close supervision of the continuous monitoring of the radioactivity level in the coming days. According to information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the radioactive-emission stayed below the maximum admissible values around the Chernobyl plant and in Kiev,” said Gavrilescu, cited by local Mediafax.

The fire started on Tuesday, April 28, in the woods near Ukraine's disused Chernobyl nuclear plant. The plant was isolated after the nuclear disaster in 1986, which released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Experts were worried that the nuclear particles left in the soil after the nuclear disaster in the 80s were absorbed by plants, and would be released into the atmosphere via the smoke from the burning forests.

Back in 1986, radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which spread over much of the western USSR and Europe. It was the worst nuclear power plant accident in history in terms of cost and casualties.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com