New wildfires near Chernobyl NPP not posing threat to people - IAEA

KYIV. May 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) - The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has agreed with Ukraine's conclusion that new wildfires raging in the near of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) do not pose a radioactive threat to people.

"Based on previous experience, such fires could lead to a very small increase of radioactive concentration in the air," IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi was quoted as saying in the agency's press release, published on its website on Thursday evening.

Ukraine said the gamma dose rate levels in the vicinity of the Chernobyl NPP were "not exceeding the reference levels", it said.

Spontaneous fires often occur in the area, still contaminated by radioactive material from the 1986 accident, this time of the year, the IAEA said.

Ukraine's State Agency on Exclusion Zone Management, for its part, said on social media the day before that the largest wildfire since the beginning of 2022 was raging on 1,500 hectares in the vicinity of Zeleniy Mys checkpoint in the Opachychi forest district.

Winds and limited technical resources have been complicating the firefighting effort, the agency said, adding that background radiation levels remain normal.

At the same time, the agency warned that smoke from wildfires burning in the exclusion zone and from fires near Ivankiv and Strakholissya outside it might spread toward Vyshhorod and Kyiv.

On the whole, the fire hazard level has considerably grown following the onset of a spell of dry and windy weather, it said.