As the 36th anniversary of the April 26, 1986, disaster approaches, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues. The Russian military also created significant risks for the Chernobyl zone.
IAEA Director General Statement on Situation in Ukraine says that “the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, is today travelling to Ukraine to lead the IAEA’s first full-fledged assistance mission of safety, security and safeguards experts to the country. The team will arrive at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) on Tuesday to deliver equipment, conduct radiological assessments and restore safeguards monitoring systems.
In his opening remarks earlier today at the First International Conference on Nuclear Law in Vienna, when referring to nuclear safety and security, Director General Grossi said: “In the case of Ukraine, we are working within, and to a great extent thanks to, the existing framework of norms and procedures through the IAEA’s Incident and Emergency Centre, including through the Agency’s Response and Assistance Network (RANET), which has been operating for a long time.”
“And now we can see how important, how essential it was, is, and will be to have such a system, which helps the IAEA and its Member States provide the assistance that they need on such occasions,” he added.
Regarding the country’s 15 operational reactors at four nuclear power plants, Ukraine said seven are currently connected to the grid, including two at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhya NPP, two at the Rivne NPP, two at the South Ukraine NPP, and one at the Khmelnytskyy NPP. The eight other reactors are shut down for regular maintenance or held in reserve. Safety systems remain operational at the four NPPs and they also continue to have off-site power available, Ukraine said.
In relation to safeguards, the IAEA said it 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.”
According to Bellona, “Russian forces had been in control of the Chernobyl plant for five weeks before withdrawing on March 31, their heavy armored vehicles churning up radiation in some of the plant territory’s most irradiated territories.
According to Chernobyl plant workers, Russian troops had taken up positions throughout the exclusion zone, a 2,600 square kilometer area around the plant that has been uninhabited since shortly after the Unit Four reactor exploded on April 26, 1986.”
Photo by Spechna Arms/unsplash
USA Today reports that “some soldiers even stole highly radioactive materials as souvenirs or possibly to sell.”
CP24 wrote that Russian troops dug trenches in radioactive forest there. Ukrainian officials worry Russians were, in effect, digging their own graves.
“Russia’s invasion marks the first time that occupying a nuclear plant was part of a nation’s war strategy, said Rebecca Harms, former president of the Greens group in the European Parliament, who has visited Chernobyl several times. She called it a “nightmare” scenario in which “every nuclear plant can be used like a pre-installed nuclear bomb.”
Reuters reports that Ukraine’s state-run atomic energy company said Russian missiles flew at low altitude over Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine on April 26, and reiterated warnings that Russia’s invasion could lead to a “nuclear catastrophe”.
On April 25, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov made a statement on the probability of nuclear war. According to him, “the risk is grave, it is real, it can not be underestimated.”