A raging forest fire today threatened a radioactive waste storage facility and forced the temporary shutdown of a nuclear reactor in southern Russia, local officials said.
Fire experts said the blaze began dangerously close to a storage site for radioactive material in the southern Voronezh region, and quickly took hold in the tinder-box conditions caused by a current heatwave.
Scores of firefighters battled for several hours to extinguish the blaze, which engulfed 23 hectares (57 acres), as it closed in on the Novovoronezhskaya power plant.
"There was no threat to the nuclear power plant, but there was a threat to the storage facility of radioactive waste which is located nearby," fire chief Vladimir Lozovsky told NTVtelevision.
Nuclear officials said the thick smoke and rise in temperature caused by the forest fire had set off the power plant's safety system. Reactor number five was shut down as a precaution.
Vladimir Rozin, the plant's deputy chief engineer, said that there had been no increase in radioactivity during the incident. The reactor later resumed power production but at reduced levels, state-run ORTtelevision quoted officials as saying.
Fire chiefs said the fire was probably started by careless picnickers.