Radiation Levels Spike as Wild Fires Burn in Exclusion Zones.
via nbcnews A Geiger counter measures a radiation level at a site of fire burning in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant outside the village of Rahivka, Ukraine . Radiation levels in the Chernobyl exclusion zone spiked 17 times over the normal background reading Sunday, the head of Ukraine's ecological watchdog said Sunday, as forest fires blazed about 12 miles into the Chernobyl disaster area. Ecological inspection Chief Yegor Firsov wrote in a Facebook post from the closed Chernobyl region. "At the center of the fire, radiation levels are high ... readings are 2.3, when the normal level is 0.14." Firsov's post included a video of a Geiger counter, a device used to measure radiation levels. According to Firsov, the alarming jump in radioactivity was found only in the centre of the fire. In a later post Sunday, he wrote that nuclear specialists had charted no increase in radiation levels in the capital, Kyiv, only about 60 miles fro