Russia sees no threat of nuclear accident from wildfires

 

MOSCOW, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- On the 65th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Japanese Hiroshima, the fear of another nuclear disaster, although one of far more local scale, is wafting over the Russian town of Sarov.

Sarov, a small town 300 km east of Moscow, hosts the Russian Nuclear Research Center and has an atomic reactor in its heart. The reactor's compound, supposedly filled with high-enriched uranium, has been surrounded by wildfires for a few days, local media reported.

Blaze consuming the woods in direct proximity to the reactor have triggered fears that the devastation caused by a "conventional" fire might cause a sort of Chernobyl-like nuclear disaster.

The fears have been based on a presumption that if outside temperatures climb high enough they could trigger an uncontrolled reaction in Sarov's atomic reactor.

Experts and officials say, however, that such an event was impossible because of technical and scientific reasons.

"Nuclear fuel just cannot detonate because of heat, however high. The nature of nuclear explosives has nothing to do with the nature of chemical explosives. This is absolutely clear for anybody with elementary knowledge of physics," Edward Boos of Moscow's Nuclear Physics Institute told Xinhua.