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A Second Churchrock Spill in the Making?

A banner in a walk July 16, 2009 as part of the 30th anniversary of the Churchrock uranium tailings spill. Photo: Navajo Times – Leigh T. Jimmie

By Leona Morgan
Nuclear Issues Study Group and Halt Holtec

Editor’s Note: Submit your comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement regarding the Churchrock spill cleanup online by December 28, 2020 here  or during an NRC Public Meeting webinar on Dec. 2 or Dec. 9.

On July 16, 1945, the Trinity Test devastated communities in southeast New Mexico. Thirty-four years later at Three Mile Island Generating Station in Pennsylvania, the United States poured extensive resources into the largest and most expensive nuclear energy disaster of that time. Less than four months later, the country didn’t flinch when it came to the second largest ever release of radiation in the world. The United Nuclear Corporation (UNC) uranium mill “accident” was largely overlooked as it happened in a rural, community of color–a form of environmental racism. The Churchrock Spill occurred in a Diné community on the same day and at the same time as the Trinity Test, July 16th at 5:30 in the morning, but in 1979.

In an August 4, 2020 interview, Edith Hood, a Diné elder and matriarch, explains the impacts from the massive uranium spill and abandoned uranium mines and mill that she and others are still fighting to get cleaned up. Hood and her family are residents of the Red Water Pond Road (RWPR) community, north of Churchrock, New Mexico. They live between the former UNC mill, former UNC Northeast Church Rock Mine (NECR), and two former Kerr McGee/Quivira mines. The mill is on privately owned land, and the rest are on the Navajo Nation, near Navajo allotment, state, and federal lands–all within a few square miles.

“We were just children when the drilling companies came in…in the 1960s, to [do] exploratory drilling for uranium. So, by the end of the sixties, there were buildings going up, setting up the mine…United Nuclear on the south side and of course Kerr McGee, which today is known as Quivira.” Hood worked at Kerr McGee from 1976 to 1982. When asked about the dangers of her job, Hood replied, “Never did I hear ‘unsafe’ or ‘dangerous’… if I was educated about this, I wouldn’t probably have gone to work there.”

Since 2008, the U.S. government has been working with the Navajo Nation to clean up 523 abandoned uranium mines and four former mill sites on Navajo Nation. However, there are hundreds of additional contaminated sites, adjacent to or located within the reservation boundary, but not technically on Navajo Nation proper.

The federal agencies working on this cleanup include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Bureau of Indian Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Department of Energy, Indian Health Service, Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry, and Centers for Disease Control. The Navajo Nation (NN) agencies involved are NN EPA and Abandoned Mine Lands Reclamation Department. Other partners include NN Department of Water Resources, the University of New Mexico and Northern Arizona University, as well as the Hopi Nation.

Due to its proximity to the RWPR community, the NECR mine has been a high priority from the beginning, yet is nowhere near completion. The residents have insisted that wastes be moved off the Navajo Nation. Some remediation of the NECR mine has been conducted, including removal of contaminated soils from residences to lands that are not on Navajo Nation, but are close enough to be carried back by the wind.

General Electric, which acquired UNC, is responsible for remediation of the former NECR uranium mine and the former mill. The mill operated from 1977 to 1982 and released over 1,100 tons of radioactive sludge into the environment in the 1979 Churchrock Spill, and over 90 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste that flowed at least 100 miles westward into Arizona.

For cleanup of the NECR mine, GE proposes to move and permanently store approximately one million cubic yards of mine waste on top of existing mill waste and to transport approximately 32,200 cubic yards of more radioactive wastes offsite, most likely to the White Mesa Mill in southeast Utah which impacts another indigenous community. The White Mesa Mill is the only operating uranium mine in the U.S. and also doubles a catch-all nuclear waste storage just three miles from the Ute Mountain Ute community.

The former UNC mill site has been undergoing remediation and monitoring, but the offsite contamination from the Spill has never been adequately addressed. The Churchrock Spill was not widely broadcast on national news, like Three Mile Island. Downstream residents were not informed and not aware of the dangers of the liquid, as children unknowingly played in the wastewater. Ranchers also reported burns to their feet and ankles as they went into the water to get their livestock out. Hood recalls about the Spill, “For us in the community…it was not like today where you instantly get messages…we didn’t hear about it for a few days… not really knowing about radiation and the bad stuff that was in that liquid…At the time, it really was not alluring … for most people, not till they get sick, or not until something affects them, especially physically. Then, you know we were in a dangerous place.” Hood continues, “we never heard about the disadvantages or the bad stuff about this. All we knew [was] that mining was good economy for the country, and it’s all in spirit with…making the country look good. They’re making weapons, but you never know what went into those weapons. Till forty years later, you hear about the bad stuff…Our children were getting sick…All the elements that we use were affected.”

The RWPR community has been demanding clean-up of their area and all sites across the Navajo Nation for over a decade, including demands for new housing, funding for education, and a comprehensive health study. “We want the community and the impacted ground cleaned up… We want this concept of ‘hózhó’ back in the community, all across the Navajo Nation, with us included,” said Hood, referring to the traditional Diné teaching which encompasses the Diné philosophy of living in harmony and balance with the universe.

A banner in a walk in 2014 as part of the anniversary of the Churchrock uranium tailings spill. Photo: The Republic – David Wallace

The proposed cleanup action to move mine waste to the mill site requires an amendment to the NRC materials license (SUA-1475) for the mill. GE submitted a license amendment application in September 2018. NRC notified the public of its intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS), to conduct a scoping process, and request for public comments in February 2019. NRC held two scoping meetings in Gallup, New Mexico on March 19, 2019 and on March 21, 2019. At these meetings, locals expressed disappointment in the slow remediation process and strong opposition against moving mine waste on top of the mill waste, which they said is in a flood plain and alluded to the possibility of another Churchrock Spill.

On November 17 this year, the NRC announced it’s accepting public comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement of this proposal until December 28th with two virtual public comment meetings on December 2nd and December 9th. The Final EIS is expected in August 2021, and final decision in January 2022.

Since 2009, on the 30th anniversary of the Spill, the Red Water Pond Road Community Association has held an annual public event around July 16th with a sunrise prayer, walk, and talks to raise awareness about uranium mining, the spill, and cleanup. Due to Covid-19, this year’s event was canceled. According to Hood, next year they plan to “carry-on” and welcome “anyone who is doing something to help Mother Earth.”

 

Sources:

“Church Rock, America’s Forgotten Nuclear Disaster, Is Still Poisoning Navajo Lands 40 Years Later”, VICE article by Samuel Gilbert (August 12, 2019)
https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne8w4x/church-rock-americas-forgotten-nuclear-disaster-is-still-poisoning-navajo-lands-40-years-later

The Church Rock Uranium Mill Tailings Spill: A Health And Environmental Assessment
https://semspub.epa.gov/work/06/1000720.pdf

Interview with Edith Hood (starts at 1:31:45)
https://www.facebook.com/537856386561307/videos/633889527249870

Quivira Mines – Red Water Pond Road
https://response.epa.gov/site/site_profile.aspx?site_id=6801

Abandoned Mines Cleanup: Federal Plans
https://www.epa.gov/navajo-nation-uranium-cleanup/abandoned-mines-cleanup-federal-plans

Navajo Nation: Cleaning Up Abandoned Uranium Mines, Northeast Church Rock Mine
https://www.epa.gov/navajo-nation-uranium-cleanup/northeast-church-rock-mine

Uranium-mine cleanup on Navajo Reservation could take 100 years
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/investigations/2014/08/06/uranium-mining-navajo-reservation-cleanup-radioactive-waste/13680399/

UNC–Church RockMill Uranium Recovery Facility
https://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/uranium/is-united-nuclear-corporation-unc.pdf

“Dam Break Investigated; Radiation of Spill Easing”, New York Times Article By Molly Ivins (July 28, 1979)
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/07/28/archives/dam-break-investigated-radiation-of-spill-easing.html

Application for Amendment of US NRC Source Material License SUA-1475, Volume 1, Prepared for UNC and GE by Stantec (10/14/2019)
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1928/ML19287A009.pdf

Application Documents for Amendment of License SUA-1475 for UNC Mill Site Near Church Rock, New Mexico, Volumes I and II (09/24/2018)
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1826/ML18267A235.html

NRC Intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) and conduct a scoping process; request for comment re: United Nuclear Corporation License SUA-1475 (02/08/2019)
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/02/08/2019-01642/united-nuclear-corporation-unc-church-rock-project

Official Transcript: NRC Public Scoping Meeting for the Environmental Impact Statement for the Church Rock Uranium Mill Site (03/19/19)
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1909/ML19092A102.pdf

Official Transcript: NRC Public Scoping Meeting for the Environmental Impact Statement for the Church Rock Uranium Mill Site (03/21/19)
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1909/ML19091A160.pdf

NRC Seeks Public Comment on Draft Environmental Study on Waste Transfer at Church Rock Site in New Mexico, NRC Press Release (11/17/2020)
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2020/20-056.pdf

Environmental Impact Statement for the Disposal of Mine Waste at the United Nuclear Corporation Mill Site in McKinley County, New Mexico Draft Report for Comment (October 2020)
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2028/ML20289A621.pdf

NRC Public Meeting Schedule for Dec. 2, 2020: Draft Environmental Impact Statement for proposed disposal of mine waste at the United Nuclear Corporation Mill Site
https://www.nrc.gov/pmns/mtg?do=details&Code=20201275

NRC Public Meeting Schedule for Dec. 9, 2020: Draft Environmental Impact Statement for proposed disposal of mine waste at the United Nuclear Corporation Mill Site
https://www.nrc.gov/pmns/mtg?do=details&Code=20201276

NRC United Nuclear Corporation Uranium Mill Site Status Summary
https://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/uranium/united-nuclear-corporation-unc-.html

“Poison in the Earth: 1979 Church Rock Spill a Symbol for Uranium Dangers”, Navajo Times article by Marley Shebala (July 23, 2009)
https://navajotimes.com/news/2009/0709/072309uranium.php

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Limited Cleanup Resumes at California’s Sacred Santa Susana

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020
By Kelly Lundeen

After seven years of stagnation, a partial cleanup at Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL), 30 miles from Los Angeles, has resumed. Boeing, NASA, and the Department of Energy (DOE) are working under a cleanup agreement with the State of California, with a one-time completion date of 2017. NASA Inspector General’s Office admitted it would cost half a billion dollars and was “not achievable.”

The infamous 2,850-acre testing site for experimental nuclear reactors had the first meltdown in the US in 1959, causing the fourth largest release of radioactive iodine-131 in history. Up to 1,800 cases of cancer may have been caused by the accident, according to a Santa Susana Field Lab Advisory Panel study released in 2006. The US National Park Service (NPS) is now considering the site’s eligibility for recognition on the National Registry of Historic Places.  If approved, cleanup requirements already agreed to could be waived.

The current cleanup efforts prioritize the buildings said to pose the greatest risk of erosion from severe storms and re-suspension of radioactive particles from wildfires. On July 21, demolition began in the DOE’s portion of the SSFL removing 4,123 cubic yards of low-level radioactive waste and about 67 cubic yards of mixed and low-level radioactive waste. Ten buildings are expected to be demolished and transported to as yet unnamed low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities.

Denise Duffield, associate director of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, says the cleanup activities only scratch the surface. “Removing parts of these ten buildings will eliminate only about 0.001% of the contamination at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, the vast majority of which is in the soil.” Boeing hasn’t returned to cleanup since 2013. The NASA currently has plans to resume demolition in 2021.

Potentially challenging the future of the cleanup is a pending NASA application on behalf of the Chumash, Gabrieleño and Fernandeño tribes for the entire SSFL site to be designated a Native American cultural site in the list of National Register of Historic Places.

Within a small section of the NASA-owned property lies the 25-acre Burro Flats Painted Cave with its historic Indigenous paintings, already listed on the National Register. Over 100 cultural sites including at least ten caves with pictographs dating back 5,000 years were recently revealed during a survey of the SSFL, leaving little doubt that the site qualifies for designation as an Historic Place. Alan Salazar, a Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians Council Elder spoke at a July 28 meeting of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors. “We’re in favor of Burro Flats being designated as a cultural district. But we also want this site cleaned up. … That whole site is sacred to us,” he said.

Yet many are skeptical of the timing of the designation. Area resident Melissa Bumstead, whose young daughter twice survived leukemia that Bumstead blames on the SSFL told the Simi Valley Acorn, “There is no reason this nomination couldn’t wait until after the cleanup was complete.”

Exceptions to the 2010 NASA cleanup agreement include “Native American artifacts that are formally recognized as Cultural Resources [aka Historic Places].” Those exceptions are subject to oversight by the State of California, not the tribe. The nomination will now undergo final review before the US National Park Service.

 — EM News Flash; and Southwest Research and Information Center, July 22, 2020

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A Message from the Most Bombed Nation on Earth

Over 900 nuclear bomb tests were conducted on Shoshone territory in the US. Residents still live with the consequences.
Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020
By Ian Zabarte

Editor’s note: In May, President Trump considered resuming nuclear weapons testing during a discussion with senior national security officials. Resumed testing would mean US rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and give other countries political reasons for their own resumption of weapons testing. Even the open threat of new tests denies and ignores the devastating and ongoing health and environmental effects of radioactive bomb test fallout suffered by the people of the Pacific islands, Canada, the United States, and its territories, in particular indigenous Shoshone and Marshall Islanders.

You never know what is killing you when it is done in secret.

I watched my uncle suffer from horrible cancer that ate away at his throat and my grandfather die of an auto-immune disease that is known to be caused by exposure to radiation.  They say he had a heart attack, but when your skin falls off, that puts stress on your heart.

Many of my cousins have died. Last year, my cousin, who is about 50, had a defibrillator put in his chest. Now his daughter, who is a toddler, has heart problems as well. At around the same time, one of my cousins told me his mom has cancer. And then a week later, he found out he has it, too.

A few months ago, an elder here died from a rare form of brain cancer.

Every family is affected. We have seen mental and physical retardation, leukemia, childhood leukemia, all sorts of cancers.

The US military industrial complex

I am the Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians—the most bombed nation on earth.

Our country is approximately 40,000 square miles (25.6 million acres), from just west of Las Vegas, Nevada all the way to the Snake River in Idaho, including a 350-mile (563km) wide strip in the Great Basin. There are approximately 25,000 to 30,000 Shoshone lineal descendants but the United States places the number much lower based on blood quantum (a percentage of ancestry).

We have been on this land for at least 10,000 years.

Our relationship to the US is based upon the Treaty of Ruby Valley signed in 1863. In the treaty, the Shoshone continue to own the land but we agreed that in exchange for $5,000 a year for 20 years, paid in cattle and other goods, the US could establish military posts on the land, that US mail and telegraph companies could continue to operate telegraph and stage lines on it, that a railway could pass through it, that the US could mine for minerals on it.

But shortly before the end of World War II, we started to be overrun by the US military industrial complex, in ways we are only now beginning to understand.

Nuclear fallout

In 1951, in violation of the treaty, the US established the Nevada Proving Grounds (later called the Nevada Test Site, and now known as the Nevada National Security Site) on Shoshone territory, and began testing nuclear weapons—without our knowledge or consent. We suspect that Nazi scientists brought to the US as part of Operation Paperclip—to help the US develop nuclear weapons—were involved. On January 27, 1951, the first nuclear test took place on our land, when a one-kiloton bomb was dropped from a plane flying over the site.

The Nevada Test Site, above, is pockmarked with craters left by atmospheric and underground nuclear weapons test explosions. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that a study by the National Cancer Institute has found that “as many as 1,000 New Mexicans living in communities near Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated 75 years ago, might have developed cancer from the radioactive fallout.” The institute’s findings were based on a six-year study. An October 1997 NCI investigation found that up to 15,000 thyroid cancers in the United States may have resulted from just the iodine-131 in the fallout from above-ground bomb tests that contaminated the US milk supply. Photo credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory/Science Photo Library.

Over the next 40 years, it became the premier testing location for American nuclear weapons. Approximately 928 nuclear tests took place on the Shoshone territory—100 in the atmosphere and more than 800 underground.

When the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, 13 kilotons of nuclear fallout rained down on the Japanese city. According to a 2009 study in the Nevada Law Journal, between 1951 and 1992, the tests conducted on our land caused 620 kilotons of nuclear fallout.

I was born in 1964 a year after above-ground testing of nuclear weapons was banned. But the US continued to test weapons of mass destruction under our land almost every three weeks until 1992.

The downwinders

The fallout from these tests covered a wide area, but it was Native American communities living downwind from the site who were most exposed—because we consumed contaminated wildlife, drank contaminated milk, lived off contaminated land. For Native American adults, the risk of exposure has been shown to be 15 times greater than for other Americans, for young people that increases to 30 times and for babies in utero to two years of age it can be as much as 50 times greater.

When the fallout came down, it killed the delicate flora and fauna, creating these huge vulnerabilities across thousands of square miles of Shoshone territory. The pine trees we use for food and heating were exposed; the plants we use for food and medicine were exposed; the animals we use for food were exposed. We were exposed.

As a result, we have watched our people die. Some of the strongest defenders of our land, of our people, are just gone.

But we have to protect our land and our people. Our identity is the land. Our identity is the pure, pristine water coming out of the ground, flowing for millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years. We see that pure water as a medicine. People need that pure water to heal.

But what we find is that we have the US brokering for the nuclear industry, brokering for the mining industry, and the destruction of our property for profit.

We cannot endure any further risk, whether from nuclear weapons testing or coal ash or oil tracking, any radiation sources at all.

Hammers and nails

We are beginning to understand what has happened to us. For more than 50 years, we have been suffering from this silent killer and the US government’s culture of secrecy keeps it silent. But we need relief.

In every other part of the world where there have been nuclear catastrophes or nuclear testing—such as Kazakhstan, Japan, even Chernobyl—there are health registries to monitor those who have been exposed, even if the numbers are kept artificially low in some places. We do not have that here in the US. We do not have that for Native American downwinders. We need that kind of testing. We need health registries. We need monitoring. We cannot wait any longer for the health disparities we are experiencing to be identified.

We have to fight the US to get it to understand our basic health needs.

We have managed to obtain documents that were declassified in the 1990s.  But there are almost two million pages. Trying to understand all of that is daunting. We do not have any funding and we do not have the support of the US to get that work done. So we have to do this ourselves, as we suffer through this continuing health crisis.

And all the while, military activities are still being conducted on our land.

We continue to endure and we live with the understanding that the radiation is there on the ground; it is there in our plants, in our animals, and inside of our people.

Killing Shoshone people was never part of the treaty we signed. Our people would never have engaged in something that would result in our own destruction.

Our custom is sharing, but when all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail, and that is what the US military has been doing—hammering the Shoshone with bombs.

—Ian Zabarte is Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians, and wrote this piece for Al Jazeera.

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Nuclear Weapons Workers Die Waiting for Care and Compensation

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020
By Kelly Lundeen

This year marks the milestone commemorations of the devastating Trinity bomb test and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By contrast, an anniversary to be celebrated is the 20 years since enactment of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA) of 2000.

This is the program that has helped 126,000 nuclear and uranium workers access $18 billion to date in much-deserved medical benefits and compensation for deaths and illnesses related to exposures to radiation and toxic substances while at work building the US nuclear arsenal.

The EEOICPA was brought into effect after nuclear workers at a uranium enrichment facility, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, in Kentucky, filed a $10 billion class-action lawsuit against federal government contractors. This is only one of the 350 nuclear weapons production, research and development sites and thousands of uranium mines and mills that have had former workers lining up to access the program.

Applying for benefits and compensation under EEOICPA is a complicated and long process. Today nearly 13,000 claims have been filed and are awaiting a decision while 96,000 claims have been denied.

Have you ever heard of this guy? “My name is Joe Harding,” he starts in a 1980 audio cassette memoir. “I am 58 years old. I have a story that I think everyone in America should know about. I heard about the atomic energy [Union Carbide] plant that was being built at Paducah, Kentucky…[it] seemed to be important and patriotic…I was 31 years old…I was strong and healthy and tough.”

Meet Clara Harding. “He began to have mutations from his joints, his fingers, toes, his angles, his elbows, his shoulder blades…Bone was actually growing through the flesh.”

Joe described the mutations “like a piece of finger nail sticking through…I would trim it off … and it would come back again.” That wasn’t all that was happening to him. He died of stomach cancer related to his 18 years at the plant.

Al Puckett was a union shop steward at the Paducah site. “They told us that stuff won’t hurt you … if you ate it.” In 1999 a document was released proving that Union Carbide plant officials knew what was happening because they were tracking worker cancers and deaths. Puckett lamented, “A lot of my friends I know died from what they did. It was just like people was expendable.” Over $1 billion has been paid to former Paducah workers through EEOICPA.

These days fewer workers are taking advantage of EEOICPA. Those working in uranium mining, milling and transport are only eligible if their exposure was prior to 1971, although groups like the Post-71 Uranium Workers Committee are working to change that.

The nuclear production, research and development workforce has decreased, although some effects of radiation exposure don’t usually appear until years later. Work site safety standards have improved as worker illness and death have cut into the bottom line of the corporations profiting from them.

Professional Case Management (PCM) is an organization that helps nuclear workers apply for benefits. PCM spokesperson Tim Lerew says some workers die waiting and that’s “not just an occasional occurrence, because a typical claim can be just a few months…but sometimes can drag into years.” Instead of covering medical costs when due, EEOICPA is only taking responsibility for compensation which Lerew translates into, “health care delayed is health care denied.”

PCM will mark the 20th anniversary on October 30, as it does every year, with a remembrance for those who paid with their health and sometimes their life working in the nuclear weapons complex.

See more at coldwarpatriots.org.

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Forest Fires Are Setting Chernobyl’s Radiation Free

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020
Quotations excerpted from the report by Jane Braxton in the The Atlantic’s Aug. 10, 2020 edition.

In the 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactors in Ukraine…

“… wildfires … have grown larger and more frequent. Each fire releases radionuclides, just as [Vasyl Yoschenko, a Ukrainian radio-ecologist] and his colleagues documented…. But none has incinerated the landscape at the scale of the fires that burned this past April. They were far larger than any since the 1986 disaster, burning for weeks and scorching nearly 165,600 acres.…[See Summer 2020 Nukewatch Quarterly, p. 6]

“Monitors in Norway, 2,000 miles away, detected increased levels of cesium in the atmosphere. Kyiv was smothered in smoke. Press reports estimated that the level of radiation near the fires was 16 times higher than normal, but we may never know how much was actually released: Yoschenko, [Sergiy] Zibtsev [a forestry professor at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine], and others impatient to take on-the-ground measurements were confined to their homes by the coronavirus pandemic.…

“When Chernobyl’s trees burn, they send their stored radionuclides aloft as inhalable aerosols. Instead of blasting from a single source, as it did in 1986, the contamination now comes from the trees that cover some 660 square miles around the nuclear power plant.… If Chernobyl forests burn, contaminants will migrate outside the immediate area,” says Zibtsev. “We know that.”

[Beginning in 1993, Zibtsev] “spent the next five summers collecting soil and vegetation samples that were later analyzed for traces of radionuclides. The radiation he found there was higher than it had been in the period immediately following the explosions, a surprising observation until Yoschenko’s 2003 experimental burn explained it: Fires had burned 12,500 acres in 1992….

“In 2015, a rash of fires in Chernobyl brought international attention to their dangers. From April to August 37,066 acres burned within the exclusion zone…. “April’s fires … scorched 23 percent of the exclusion zone… nearly four and a half times the size of fires in 2015….”

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