Energoatom, a Ukrainian regulatory agency that operates nuclear power plants in the country, warned on Monday that forest fires near Russian-held Chernobyl have raised radiation concerns. In a March 21 statement, the Ukrainian parliament said that at least seven different fires were spotted near the plant by satellite images of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel-2 satellite. Though the now-defunct plant no longer produces nuclear power, the radiation at the site is consistently monitored, especially after a catastrophe in 1986—when an explosion at the plant became one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents. Russian forces captured Chernobyl, which is located along the Ukraine–Belarus border and about 60 miles north of Kyiv, just days after Russian troops launched what Moscow calls “a special military operation” in Ukraine on Feb. 24. Early on Monday, management of the Chernobyl plant carried out a “partial rotation” of personnel who had been working non-stop at the nuclear plant since the …
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