There were also reports of a recent fire in the area, suggesting that soldiers were exposed to radioactive smoke along with dust from the disturbed ground. Chernobyl power plant staff said Russian soldiers contaminated the plant with radioactive material they were transporting from the forest in their shoes. As a result, radioactivity levels at the power plant have risen, staff said. “It’s crazy, really,” Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galustchenko told CNN. “I really have no idea why they did it. “But we can see that they got there, the soldiers who went there, came back here and the level of radiation increased.” Plant officials said the increased levels of radioactivity were only slightly higher than what the World Nuclear Association describes as natural radiation. But while one-time contact may not be dangerous, constant exposure poses a health risk. In a particularly reckless incident, a Russian soldier handled a source of cobalt-60 in a bare-handed garbage dump, according to Valeriy Simyonov, the site’s chief security engineer. He exposed himself to so much radiation in a matter of seconds that it slipped off the scales of a Geiger counter, Simyonov said. It was not clear what happened to the soldier.
