By Yurii Kovalenko
CHORNOBYL, Ukraine -A Russian drone attack badly damaged the confinement structure around the disused Chornobyl nuclear power plant intended to prevent the release of nuclear substances, a senior nuclear industry official said on Friday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the International Atomic Energy Agency had earlier reported that radiation levels remained normal at the plant, site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986.
“The barrier which was supposed to prevent the spread of radioactive substances has ceased to function according to its original design,” Oleksandr Tytarchuk, the plant’s chief engineer, told reporters at the stricken plant.
“However, to minimise the consequences that you can all see now, we will do everything possible in the near future.”
Tytarchuk said the drone had pierced the outer cover of the containment vessel and exploded inside.
The containment vessel was completed in 2019 to cover the vast, and deteriorating, steel and concrete structure hurriedly erected after the April 1986 explosion in the plant’s fourth reactor.
“The drone hit the outer cover, pierced it, fell into the system and exploded there,” Tytarchuk said.
Had the explosion occurred 15-20 metres (50-65 feet) farther away, he said, “it would have directly hit the old shelter, which is 40 years old.”
Emergency crews clambered over the roof of the structure, attending to a large gaping hole.
Andriy Danyk, head of Ukraine’s Emergency Services, said personnel working at the site were being constantly rotated.
“We are ensuring that no one receives any radiation exposure,” he said. “There are no excessive levels at the site.”
Hryhory Ishchenko, head of the exclusion zone still in effect around the plant, said that by general agreement, drones are not shot down around nuclear sites.
The 1986 explosion at Chornobyl sent radiation spewing out across Europe and prompted Soviet authorities to mobilise vast numbers of men and equipment to deal with the aftermath of the accident. The plant’s last working reactor was closed in 2000.
Russia occupied the plant and the surrounding area for more than a month in the first weeks of its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine as its forces initially tried to advance on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
(Reporting by Yurii Kovalenko in Chornobyl, Writing by Ron Popeski; Editing by Sergiy Karazy, Leslie Adler and Matthew Lewis)
