Fierce wildfires raging across Russia are a risk to the top-secret capital of its nuclear research industry, officials admitted last night.
Two soldiers were killed yesterday fighting blazes dangerously close to the highly sensitive town of Sarov, despite claims in recent days the fires were under control.
The town, where the atomic complexes are based, is so tightly guarded it remains closed to foreigners, as in Soviet times.
Hundreds of wildfires have been burning across three time zones in Russia. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday boarded a fire-fighting plane to dump water on blazes close to Moscow, where the smoke has caused thick smog.
At Sarov, 230 miles east of the capital and known during the Cold War as Arzamas-16, soldiers have dug a five-mile canal to protect the nuclear arms site.
The two who died were tackling blazes in forests surrounding the town, which remains ringed
by high fences and military checkpoints.
One, rifle battalion commander Vasily Tezetev, 22, ‘died the death of a hero’, according to the local emergency centre. Officials say some sensitive nuclear equipment has been removed from the site to be stored away from the fires.
An official for Russian nuclear body Rosatom insisted last night the nuclear facilities were ‘working normally’ but admitted there were four sites close to Sarov ‘where the risk of sudden inflammation
is still high’.
Conflicting reports over the threat have raised fears that officials are covering up the extent of the damage.
Built by Nazi prisoners of war, the first Soviet nuclear bomb was created in the town and it remains the headquarters of Russian atomic research.
Fires also threaten Snezhinsk, home to another of Russia’s top nuclear research centres, and the reprocessing plant Ozersk, also in the Urals, where a state of emergency has been declared.
Around 557 blazes are still raging, with forecasters fearing the extremely dry conditions could last another ten days.
Moscow remains covered by a stifling smog, with morgues full from a huge rise in the numbers dying during the heat wave.
The cost already to the Russian economy already amounts to a staggering £10 billion and experts have warned the damage will stall Russia’s recovery from recession.
‘Economic growth in Russia is slowing and the heat wave will lead to a further slowdown,’ said Alexander Morozov, chief economist for HSBC bank in Russia.
