The investigation should also determine whether Moscow troops have stolen radioactive materials from the plant, according to Professor Tom Scott, a professor of radioactive materials at the University of Bristol. Ukrainian officials say Russian troops occupying the plant have dug trenches in highly radioactive soil without wearing PPE to camp in the surrounding Red Forest – one of the most radioactive places on earth – exposing them to “significant doses of radiation”. earlier this month. Valeriy Simyonov, chief security engineer for the Chernobyl nuclear site, told the New York Times that a Russian soldier lifted a Cobalt-60 fountain barefoot, exposing himself to so much radiation within seconds that it went out. scales of a Geiger meter. Professor Scott told i: “I do not think there is an impact on safety with the Chernobyl power plant. The staff there is extremely capable, they know what they are doing. “I think what is really urgent internationally is that they can get teams on the ground, obviously it is not safe to do that yet because they do not know if the Russians will come back and return from Belarus. “It’s really important that they can fully characterize the remaining radioactive footprint in the facilities in areas of the Red Forest that are clearly disturbed. And to quantify how bad it is. The other thing is to check that no materials are lost. “The Russians filled a lot of sandbags and put sandbags on the site ready to defend it. The question is where did they get their sand from? “If this sand comes from digging in the Red Forest, then what they have moved is some incredibly radioactive material back to the Chernobyl site.”
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It was “reasonable” that Russian troops had been exposed to radioactive ground, judging by satellite imagery of where they were digging, said Professor Scott, with ditches possibly being dug into debris spent nuclear fuel. Ukrainian authorities have approved possible projects to conduct a possible Chernobyl assessment, which “may be just a few days away,” he added. Oleksandr Lobada, the station’s radio safety supervisor, said Chernobyl workers who were allowed to stay at the plant after the Russians occupied it stole fuel from the occupiers to ensure that its generator would continue to operate at the plant after the power outage. for three days. Trenches dug by the Russian army can be seen in an area with high levels of radiation called the Red Forest (Photo: Reuters / Gleb Garanich) “If we had lost power, it could have been catastrophic,” Mr Lobada told the BBC. “Radioactive material could have been released.” A “catastrophic” escape of radioactive material from overheating of the fuel cells in the event that the backup generators did not work would be “incredibly unlikely,” Professor Scott believed. The main concern for any power loss would be that security systems would be inactive, leaving factory workers “blind” to any problems, he said. “This is the biggest threat. Under normal circumstances, the chances of anything unpleasant happening would be extremely small. “You can not say zero, but it would be extremely low,” he added. “The stress of the whole thing was that the Russians were there and the Russians were unpredictable. People digging holes in the Red Forest is completely crazy. “I think it ‘s good evidence that it shows that these people did not understand the dangers, they do not understand what is safe and what is not. “And so I can understand the power plant view that having these unpredictable people with guns in your facility, who do not know exactly what they are going to do, is really stressful. “And obviously, if you lose the ability to watch and one of these intruders does something stupid, then you do not know what happened, you do not know how to respond quickly, it probably caused the most stress.” Concerns have been raised that 170 Ukrainian national guardsmen were being held captive at the scene before being captured by Russian troops, who withdrew in full earlier this month. Last month, a Chernobyl worker, speaking to i, gave the first internal report on life at the nuclear plant after the Russian invasion and warned that exhausted personnel were being forced to work 24-hour shifts, increasing the risk of an accident. Russia took control of the nuclear program on February 24 at the start of the invasion. This week, the first shots came from inside Chernobyl after the withdrawal of Russian forces a week ago, revealing looting and destruction.
