Ukrainians are fighting back against Russia’s invasion. However, the situation is complex, and the damage is extreme.
“The ongoing militarization of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone by the Russian occupation forces seriously increases the risk of damage to the insulation structures erected over the NPP’s Power Unit 4 after its 1986 explosion. Such damage will inevitably lead to a significant amount of radioactive dust reaching the atmosphere, contaminating not only Ukraine but also other European nations,” the Ukrainian official statement says. The Russian occupying forces ignore threats and warnings, continuing to transport and store significant amounts of munitions in the immediate vicinity of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
“Dozens of tonnes of self-propelled rockets, howitzer artillery shells, and mortar munitions” are reported to be transported daily from the rear base located in the Naraulianski district, Gomel region of Belarus.
The transport corridor of the Russian invaders passes through the city of Prypiat a few hundred meters from the isolation facilities of the Chornobyl NPP. Ammunition is then stocked up in the town of Chornobyl, near Prypiat, which is also a short distance from the Chornobyl NPP.
In Chornobyl, the occupiers deployed a temporary command post of their Eastern Military District, as well as a command post of the 38th separate motorized rifle brigade of the Land Forces.
The Russian occupation forces are increasingly using obsolete, poor-quality munitions, intelligence says. “The 165th artillery brigade (Belogorsk, Amur region), which is part of the Russian occupational grouping of forces, has received permission to use such old and poor-quality munitions. This increases the risk of their self-detonation even during loading and shipment,” the report says, adding that such incidents have been rather regular in the past.
Many areas of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone were recently on fire. These fires could potentially spread radionuclides to Belarus and the rest of Europe. Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Liudmyla Denisova called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to “send experts and firefighting equipment to Ukraine as soon as possible to prevent irreparable consequences not only for Ukraine but for the whole world.”
Iryna Vereshchuk, Deputy Prime Minister – Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine, calls to take immediate measures to demilitarize the exclusion zone of the Chornobyl NPP and establish a special UN mission to eliminate the risk of a nuclear disaster.
Zoï Environment Network has documented the environmental impacts of the war. Their maps are the attempts to depict the devastating environmental impacts of the war in Ukraine.
The BelNews from Belarus reports that the first Russian soldiers with radiation sickness were taken back to Russia. They spent several weeks in the Chernobyl zone. Also, soldiers complain that they are exposed to radiation in the Chernobyl area, but the commanders still throw them into combat. It is difficult to verify such information without knowing the additional details of what caused damage to soldiers’ bodies: a large dose of radiation is often received over a short period. However, it is clear that the Russian military has to stop this war and leave the Chernobyl zone and other Ukrainian territories immediately.
Near the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone sits Slavutych, the Ukrainian town where workers at the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant live. Ukrainian staff has continued to manage the site even after Russian forces took control of the plant on February 24, the day that Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Russian forces took control of Slavutych and took Mayor Yuriy Fomichev hostage on March 26. Russian troops had also occupied the municipal hospital. Residents filled the streets carrying a large blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag and headed toward the hospital, the administration said. Russian forces fired into the air and threw stun grenades into the crowd, it added. Fomichev posted a video on Facebook later on March 26 saying that at least three people had died.
IAEA monitoring developments after Ukraine informed that Russian forces had seized Slavutych, where many staff of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant lives. There are also problems with staff rotation.
IAEA Director General Statement on Situation in Ukraine says: The International Atomic Energy Agency is closely monitoring the situation in a Ukrainian city where many people live who work at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) after the country’s nuclear regulator today informed the IAEA it had been seized by Russian forces, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said.
The Director General said he remained concerned about the ability of staff at the Chornobyl NPP to regularly rotate and return to their homes in the nearby city of Slavutych to rest. There has been no staff rotation at the NPP for nearly a week now, the regulator said.
Slavutych is located outside the Exclusion Zone that was set up around the Chornobyl NPP after the 1986 accident. Russian forces took control of the NPP on February 24. Earlier this week, Ukraine’s regulatory authority said that Russian shelling of checkpoints in Slavutych prevented technical staff of the Chornobyl NPP from travelling to and from the site.
In an update this morning, the regulator said Slavutych was surrounded. A few hours later, it cited Chornobyl NPP management as confirming media reports that the city had been seized.
The regulator said the last staff rotation was on 20-21 March, when a new shift of technical personnel arrived from Slavutych to replace colleagues who had worked at the Chornobyl NPP since the day before the Russian military entered the site, where radioactive waste management facilities are located. There was “no information when or whether” a new change of work shift would take place, it said.
Director General Grossi has repeatedly expressed deep concern about the difficult situation for staff operating Ukrainian nuclear sites held by the Russian military, also including the Zaporizhzhya NPP. He has stressed that the ability of NPP staff to carry out their important tasks without undue pressure is one of the seven indispensable pillars for nuclear safety that he outlined earlier this month.
In the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, the regulator said shelling was for a second day preventing measures to dispose of an unexploded rocket near a nuclear research facility. The previously damaged facility has been used for research and development and radioisotope production for medical and industrial applications. Its nuclear material is subcritical and the radioactive inventory is low. Personnel at the facility were maintaining the operability of the nuclear installation’s equipment and radiation was within “standard limits”. However, it was not possible to restore off-site power to the facility due to the shelling, the regulator added.
At the Zaporizhzhya NPP, the regulator said repairs to the transformer of reactor unit 6 had been completed after it was damaged on March 4, when Russian forces took control of this site, and the unit would be kept in reserve.
Out of the country’s 15 operational reactors at four sites, the regulator said eight were continuing to operate, including two at Zaporizhzhya, three at Rivne, one at Khmelnytskyy, and two at South Ukraine. The other reactors are shut down for regular maintenance, it added.
In relation to safeguards, the Agency said that the situation remained unchanged from that reported previously. The Agency was still not receiving remote data transmission from its monitoring systems installed at the Chornobyl NPP, but such data was being transferred to IAEA headquarters from the other NPPs in Ukraine.”
The total amount of one-time losses suffered by Ukraine since the start of Russian invasion already stands at $564.9 billion. This was announced by First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko.
The situation in Ukraine is ctitical and very dynamic during the war. Please follow the Ukrinform news agency and The Kyiv Independent for the latest updates. The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine is also providing experts’ information.