“Thieves” looted “radioactive ingredients” easily mixed with explosives to create a “dirty bomb.” Nuclear safety expert Anatolii Nosovskyi is going frantic. Thanks to the chaos caused by Putin’s invasion, “a monitoring lab in Chernobyl village has been raided.” Not by the Russians. Underground resistance forces may be planning to turn it against the enemy but nobody is even hinting about that possibility.
Missing radioactive material
As reported by Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants Director Anatolii Nosovskyi, even finding out the scope and extent of the situation is a challenge because he “lost contact with the lab.”
That means the “fate of these sources is unknown to us.” Without going into sensitive specifics, the director points out a wide area is at risk of contamination “if such a bomb were to be made,” built from the radioactive isotopes and “waste pieces said to be taken.”
When Russian forces blazed through, local firefighters were unable to put out a bunch of fires “in the exclusion zone.” That puts all of Ukraine and part of Europe at risk from “significant deterioration of the radiation situation.”
So far, they’ve been lucky. “measurements don’t suggest that the concentrations of radioactive particles in the smoke pose a health hazard.” He puts an asterisk up next to that, though, by adding “an automated monitoring system which went down with the power outage on March 9 is still offline.”
Lyudmila Denisova, commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for human rights further confirms that “more than 10,000 hectares of forests are burning in the exclusion zone in the CAEC area due to combat action.” Dry, windy weather isn’t helping. Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk is furious with the Kremlin.
Attacking the still radioactive site left by one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters is insane. Such “irresponsible” acts “could send radiation across much of Europe.” She called on the U.N. Security Council to take “immediate measures.” That’s the same as stamping her foot, for all it will do. Russia holds veto power at the U.N. so, when they vote “nyet,” the idea goes in the trash.
Threat to hundreds of millions
Denisova declares on social media that Putin’s troops “pose a very serious threat not only to Ukraine, but also to hundreds of millions of Europeans.” For God’s sake they’re using old ammo “creating a risk of damaging the containment vessel constructed around the station’s wrecked fourth reactor.” That’s the radioactive mess they covered in concrete when the pile melted down.
Using “old and badly maintained weapons increases detonation risk.” The stuff could blow up just from “loading and transporting” Vereshchuk chimed in. She claims “Russian troops carry the equipment through Pripyat, just under two miles away from the power plant.”
Even worse, they decided to put an ammo stockpile right there in the radioactive town of Chernobyl so nobody in Ukraine will be stupid enough to try to blow it up.
“Further storage of hundreds of tons of ammunition is carried out next to the city of Chernobyl, which is also a short distance from the nuclear power plant.” The way she sees that, it’s “nuclear terrorism.”
Putin’s forces zeroed in on Chernobyl during the first days of last months invasion, “and for a time prevented staff maintaining facilities there from leaving or being spelled off by other workers.” They built special town on the edge of the radioactive wasteland to “house the plant’s staff in the aftermath of the 1986 accident.”
It was recently reported that Russian forces already bugged out. One former worker says a “huge catastrophe” is still possible. Earlier in March, Russian troops shelled “Europe’s largest nuclear power plant” at Zaporizhzhia. Right after that, “rockets were fired at Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, which contains nuclear material and a reactor.“