The Chernobyl structure, which was hit on Friday, is a huge arch covering what the remains of a crippled reactor. The melting disintegrated the radiation into the atmosphere and contaminated the 18 kilometer zone around the plant that the inhabitants were forced to leave.
The protective structure that resembles an aircraft’s hangar was Completed in 2016. It covers a different structure known as the sarcophagus, which was built immediately after the disaster.
The exploding drone violated the outer shield, but did not damage the older structure of internal retention, Leontiy Derkach, radiological engineer on the spot, he said in a telephone interview.
The explosion sprayed the shrapnel into the space between the two structures and damaged both, said, but did not spread radioactive materials. The emergency crews responded at about 3 o’clock in the morning, he said when the fire was still burning.
The first people who approached the place were workers with radiation meters to see if the leakage of radiation escaped, he said. “We are not a kamikaze to immediately enter the danger zone,” he said.
The air samples determined that no radiation did, Mr. Derkach said. Ukrainian military chemists and radiation specialists are still working on the spot to get a fuller picture of damage. Around noon he said that the crews have not yet entered the outer structure of retaining for a closer look.
The drone, said, hit about 60 yards, where the trademarks covered highly radioactive debris since the 1986 accident. If it hit this place, he said, an exploding drone could spread radiation at least inside the external retention structure.
Emergency crews, said Mr. Derkach, evaluating how to fix the hole. “The Russians caused us great damage,” he said. “The whole world built this hiding place and the Russians destroyed it in one second.”
Greenpeace, a group of protection, issued a statement of a strike at the Chernobyl plant and said it was “another escalation of the threat to the Ukrainian nuclear power plant and must be convicted and punished”.
Chernobyl was among the first places focused on Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, because the Russian army captured and occupied a plant withdrawn and used a place as a base for attacks on Kiev south.
The radiation levels have increased for several days, most likely from the columns of heavy weapons mixing dust. During the monthly occupation of the place, Russian soldiers dug the trenches in irradiated soil and electricity into the cooling pool for nuclear waste were briefly reduced and increased alarms.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said its employees had heard an explosion overnight at the site of a former nuclear power plant.
Strike on Chernobyl, about two hours north of the capital of Ukraine, Kiev and recent Increasing military activity Around the Nuclear Power Plant Zaporizhzhia in the Russian zone “underlining the persistent nuclear security risks,” said Rafael Grossi, CEO of the agency.
Ivan Nezepurenko and Maria Varenikov contributed by news.
