Question of the day: will the radioactive smoke from the Chernobyl fires reach the south of Russia?

Unpleasant news are reported on the blog by the Green Cat expert. As you know, forests are burning near Chernobyl , and although firefighters try not to let fire reach the radioactive waste storage facilities, the surrounding forests also are the areas of the high contamination, and dangerous radioactive deposits can fly into the air and cover significant distances.

By April 17, smoke density had increased significantly. If earlier smoky trains spread only over Ukraine and the southern regions of Belarus, then on the 17th the gray line stretched much further to the southeast, reaching, it seems, even Rostov-on-Don. The spread of the smoky plume can be seen in the shooting of the Russian meteorological satellite "Electro-L2".

(Red hue due to the fact that shooting is carried out with the capture of near infrared light).

Also, smoke distribution can be monitored via sat24.com where the data of the European satellite Meteosat-8 is displayed.

There is no evidence that this smoke poses any increased threat to the body. The Russian Hydromet and the Belarusian Republican Center for Meteorology monitor the situation and report that no changes in the radioactive background are observed .

Dmitry Gorchakov, a popular science blogger and popularizer of science, recommends a service for monitoring radioactivity at Rosatom facilities for self-monitoring of the situation. Kursk, Voronezh and Rostov NPPs are potentially in the path of Chernobyl smoke spread, but as you can see, everything is green (around Volgodonsk too).

On the interactive map of the European Commission, one point is visible in the south of Belarus, where an increase in the radioactive background is recorded: 530 nanosievert per hour, instead of the normal 110 nanosievert per hour.

For a person, such an indicator is not dangerous, if you live in such a year, you can get the radiation that any astronaut on the International Space Station receives in about 4 days. In addition, on April 17, when the European sensor showed such a value, the wind blew in the opposite direction and there was no smoke from the fire.