Categories: INVESTIGATIONS

Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant: consequences of the russian occupation

38 years have passed since the day of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant tragedy. But on 2022, Ukraine and the whole world were at risk of a repeat of the disaster, because the Chornobyl nuclear power plant was under Russian occupation for more than a month. In the first days of the invasion, some monitoring stations recorded a 7-fold increase in radiation levels.

Ukrainian Radio journalist Iryna Zhdanova visited the exclusion zone and talked with the Chernobyl NPP’s employees, who continued to work there even despite its capture.

Dmytro Solonenko works at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant as a shift engineer at the radiation safety department. On February 24 last year, when the Russian military seized the ChNPP, he was on shift:

“I work at spent nuclear fuel storage facility No.2. At the time of the seizure, I was on shift, supervising the radiation control system at the facility. Then we heard the sounds of explosions and planes. The shift chief of the plant gave a command for all personnel to evacuate to the protective structure at ABK-1. I and the shift chief stayed at the facility to monitor the radiation and technological control system. That is, there were two persons at the facility, all the others were evacuated to ABK-1. The occupiers probably did not guess about the purpose of the facility. It was captured in two or three days. They sent their personnel to the plant. We received a video of how the plant was surrounded with tanks and armored personnel carriers. And then we acted according to the instructions given by the shift chief of the plant, who controlled the entire process,” he tells.

There was a Karrimat on the floor instead of a bed

According to him, the Russian military, who entered the plant, took over access control to the plant. They dislodged our soldiers, transferred them to ABK-1 as prisoners and posted their guards. “If they brought something, in particular, sandbags, we had to control that they did not spread radioactive contamination. We did our usual work. When they bring something, take it out, drive in with their vehicles, we had to control the vehicles. They communicate with us trying to convince us that they were liberating us from something, but it was not possible to convince them otherwise,” the engineer notes.

When they arrived at the plant in their armored personnel carrier at night, they stood under the plenum ventilation system of the object, and we could smell something burning. But we had to сheck all the equipment and find out if something was burning at the object. Then we found out that the occupiers had arrived in an APC. We spent nights at the workplace. We had no other choice, because the system is located there, no one else can control it,” Solonenko says.

Dmytro shows us a photo of those days. There was a Karrimat on the floor instead of a bed. Such puzzle mats are usually placed on the floor in children’s playrooms, and it was used during some work at the plant.

“When welding works are carried out, people use such mats so that they don’t have to stand on their knees. So we washed these mats and used them as a resting place,” he adds.

They worked in this mode for 25 days

Dmytro Solonenko and his colleagues, who were on shift at the time of the plant seizure, worked in this mode for 25 days. It is not only extremely difficult, but also dangerous — working at a nuclear facility requires focus and concentration. Only on March 20 it was possible to carry out a partial staff rotation for the first time. Workers who replaced their colleagues at the workplace agreed to this voluntarily. Vadym Parkhomenko, engineer at the physical protection system department of the Chornobyl NPP, tells:

“We voluntarily chose to go or not. Many of our workers were from Chernihiv, which was occupied, so they could not come from there. Some of our guys had small children. My wife with our child had already left, so I decided to go. Someone had to go. We travelled by bus, then – by a wooden boat, because the bridge was destroyed. I saw how an Eskander was launched from the Belarusian coast. We were met by Belarusians, but with an obvious Russian accent. There were a lot of them, all in masks. We were accompanied by several armored personnel carriers,” he tells.

In total, Vadym Parkhomenko had to work under the occupation for 12 days. He says: “I got the impression that some of the Russian military who seized the plant were completely unaware of the potential danger of hostilities at the nuclear facility.

“There was a case, when a guy, probably in his 20s, from the Russian Guard approached me. He pointed his finger at the sarcophagus and asked me, “Is this the plant that was shown on TV? I think they didn’t really understand where they got to,” says the ChNPP worker.

In the first days of the invasion, some monitoring stations recorded a 7-fold increase in radiation levels

The whole world probably breathed a sigh of relief when the Chornobyl nuclear power plant returned to Ukraine’s control. According to the Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine Ruslan Strilets, the issue of radiation safety is of concern to many people:

“In the first days of the full-scale invasion, some monitoring stations recorded a 1, 2 or even 7-fold increase in radiation levels. Why did this happen? The rise was caused by heavy military vehicles stirring contaminated soil. They actually raised the radioactive dust, which has been at rest for many years, and some processes have begun to take place. Currently, there is no such threat. The dust is near the ground. In my opinion, our greatest achievement is that we, together with the employees of the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management, with those people who have been working here for many years, succeeded in restoring the work of the monitoring system. Because, believe me, many ministers of other countries (e.g., the minister of environmental protection of Bulgaria) called me and asked what the radiation status was and what the radiation level was. And thanks to our “EcoZagroza” application, which is used by the whole world today, they can check in real time the level or status of radiation,” the minister emphasizes.

Transportation of spent nuclear fuel is prohibited

Currently, the Chornobyl nuclear power plant operates under the supervision of specialists. But they did not return to the pre-war regime of work. Dmytro Solonenko, shift engineer at the radiation safety department, explains what has changed in his area of work:

“There are changes, we are prohibited from transporting spent nuclear fuel, that is, the facility is not fully functional now. We control the parameters, support the operation of the equipment, but transportation is prohibited. As far as I understand, there are mines there. According to our military, they cannot guarantee the safety of transportation, because the border is very close. And therefore, the work on the transportation of spent nuclear fuel and its sealing is not being carried out yet,” he notes.

That is, according to Dmytro Solonenko, the process of transporting spent nuclear fuel to the dry-type spent nuclear fuel storage facility is currently suspended. In June 2021, when this process began, experts explained: the old spent nuclear fuel storage facility is of a so-called “wet type”, and it is not intended for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel. Its term of operation ends at the end of 2025. Therefore, a new “dry-type” storage facility was built. It is designed to store spent nuclear fuel for 100 years. At that time, in the summer of 2021, it was envisaged that the process of transporting spent nuclear fuel from the Chornobyl NPP to the new storage facility would take approximately 10 years. The full-scale war has made adjustments to this forecast, and it is not yet known what consequences this will lead to.

Ukrainian Radio

Ukraine Front Lines