Russia ‘looted’ Chernobyl lab with ‘highly active’ radioactive samples
Russian troops “looted and destroyed” a specialist laboratory containing “highly active” radioactive samples from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukrainian officials claimed Wednesday.
Invading forces had made the now-decommissioned main plant — site of the world’s worst nuclear meltdown in 1986 — an early target, storming and taking control of it on the first day of the war last month.
This week they also “illegally seized” a new $6.5 million laboratory that was opened in 2015 with support from the European Commission to improve management of radioactive waste there, according to the Ukrainian agency responsible for the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
The lab contained “highly active samples and samples of radionuclides that are now in the hands of the enemy,” the agency said in a Facebook post, referring to unstable atoms that release radiation.
The Ukrainian agency said it hoped Russian troops “will harm [themselves] and not the civilized world.”
While Chernobyl was decommissioned, the lab was built as part of careful management needed to prevent another disaster like 1986. It contained pioneering equipment not available anywhere else in Europe, the statement claimed.
The attack came just a day after Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory agency said radiation monitors around the plant had stopped working.
“There is no data on the current state of radiation pollution of the exclusion zone’s environment, which makes it impossible to adequately respond to threats,” the state nuclear company Energoatom warned.
“Radiation levels in the exclusion zone and beyond, including not only Ukraine, but also other countries, could significantly worsen,” it warned, saying seasonal wildfires posed a particular risk.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday also accused Russia of using the exclusion zone around Chernobyl to prepare new attacks.
“The world is on the verge of many new crises,” he said, without elaborating on the exact info for the zone. “The environmental and food challenges are unprecedented.”
With Post wires
