Urban explorers from Ukraine say they have discovered logging operations inside the Chornobyl exclusion zone and warn that irradiated wood is being sold to unsuspecting consumers. Source: CBC Canada
“I wouldn’t want to live in such a house,” Artur Kalmykov said.
The computer programmer from Kiev visits the exclusion zone frequently because he says it relaxes him.
On a recent trip to the zone, Kalmykov and his explorers, who call themselves “stalkers,” found that an area they had visited a month or so earlier had been completely clearcut by loggers.
“The first time we saw forests and the second time it wasn’t there,” said Kalmykov.
Thirty years ago this week, an accident at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine dumped lethal amounts of radiation in the area surrounding the reactor, killing dozens within hours and thousands more since — an exact number is still a hotly debated topic.
A 30-kilometre exclusion zone was established around the reactor to minimize people’s exposure to radiation, this zone is now 2600 square kilometers.
Now, it appears that parts of the forest are being logged for consumers to unwittingly buy.
Kalmykov took his discovery to Stop Corruption, a political watchdog group.
The group accuses the agency in charge of the exclusion zone of corruption and says irradiated wood from the zone could wind up in people’s homes.
In an interview with The New York Times, the director of the exclusion zone, Vitalii V Petruk claimed illegal logging had not taken place since he assumed the job in the fall.
Kalmykov also recently met some loggers working in the zone. They told him they didn’t know who their bosses were either.
Petruk has proposed increased logging in the area to feed a steam power plant that would reduce the need for Russian natural gas.
In the aftermath of the disaster, an area of forest in the path of the fallout absorbed so much radiation that within days all the trees had turned red, earning it the nickname of “the Red Forest.” These trees were eventually cut down and buried.
++ As Ukraine marks 30 years since the worst nuclear disaster in history, you may be confused to see the name of the explosion site spelled two different ways. Some may be accustomed used to seeing the Russian spelling, Chernobyl, however, many media outlets have transitioned to using the Ukrainian spelling, Chornobyl. When Ukraine became independent from the former Soviet Union, the Ukrainian Government requested that international agencies re-establish the original spellings of Ukrainian cities, regions and names.
