by Massimo Sideri
Some Russian soldiers are leaving the Chernobyl area, according to the Pentagon, and the Belarusian media said that after digging trenches in the “red forest, they would be taken to specialized hospitals in Belarus.
If the news were confirmed that some Russian military personnel were sickened by radiation from Chernobyl, it would at least be a worrying signal. For several reasons: basically everyone knows that the area of the site that exploded in 1986 is so badly contaminated that it will be offlimits to humans for the entire next century with a perimeter. The air you breathe is radioactive, the earth is polluted, the waters are dangerous. Tons of materials used immediately after the disaster were buried within a radius of at least 30 kilometers around the exploded reactor.
In recent years, a macabre tourism had also emerged in Chernobyl, with a visit to the field of alienation or exclusion: a kind of amusement park of radioactive devastation that emanated from Kyiv: but it was linked to various safety factors. First of all, after 37 years, average airborne radiation, as measured by ambient gamma dose intensity, has stabilized and is nonlethal throughout the day. In each case, precautions were taken, both in terms of clothing and masks, and in terms of interaction with the environment.
So: According to Ukrainian sources, part of the soldiers were taken to a Belarusian hospital specializing in the treatment of diseases caused by exposure to nuclear radiation, as they would show acute symptoms of nuclear contamination. A US Defense Department official confirmed Wednesday, March 30, that some Russian forces have withdrawn from Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Confirmation of the news would therefore also be direct confirmation of a lack of equipment on the part of the Russian troops, a carelessness and superficiality in dealing with the Chernobyl area, which would inevitably lead to the conclusion that it is not under control. The Russian militiamen also passed through the Rotwald unnoticed.
Since February 24, when Russian troops occupied the Chernobyl power plant, sensors recorded a peak in the intensity of the “environmental gamma dose”: from about 3,000 nanosieverts per hour (nSv/h) to over 65,000 nSv/h (1 sievert corresponds to the Absorption of the energy of 1 joule per kg body weight by the entire human body due to exposure to gamma rays of cosmic or terrestrial origin in the air, in the external environment). According to experts, the spike would only have been caused by the movement of heavy military vehicles on the radiationcontaminated ground around the site of the 86 nuclear power plant that blew up. But even with the occupation of other nuclear sites, such as that of Zaporizhzhia (where there are six active reactors, now partially shut down by the Russians, which alone provided about a quarter of all Ukraine’s energy), the nuclear experts at ‘Aiea, the International Atomic Energy Agency, have sent out signals of moderate calm: Europe is indeed full of environmental gamma dose collection centers, so much so that the European Commission’s Joint Research Center is publishing the data (https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu /Simple.aspx). Chernobyl is of course a special case. As already mentioned, we know that even in prewar conditions, the level exceeded 3,000 nSv / h, a percentage that allowed the unfortunate tourism in Ukraine to visit the absolute devastation of the radioactive area (a couple of hours of exposure, according to opinion, has no consequences from experts). But from today’s general map of Ukraine, the maximum radiation levels have also, paradoxically, fallen below the level of 500 nSv/h, a limit which until yesterday was exceeded in some areas such as the UkraineBelarus border (so very close to the Chernobyl Area). The intensity can depend on many factors, including environmental factors such as the wind, which lifts radioactive dust from Earth. However, as confirmed by the IAEA, the control units of the occupied territories are in fact no longer transmitting any data. This does not mean that if the gamma doses were increased significantly, the other European plants would not see the variation. However, some of the data on the map is now “out of date. As the IAEA had to concede, “the information is now coming to us from the Russian military.” A mission of neutral observers is becoming more and more necessary for this.
The power plant fell into Russian hands in the first days of the invasion of Moscow troops into Ukrainian territory in late February: and the “Chernobyl fall” sparked fears in the international community that safety standards within the central, and wider, area could be compromised .
It is currently not possible to say whether the troops who left the area have withdrawn from the nuclear power plant site or the surrounding area, whether it is a matter of withdrawal or relocation: “We cannot yet say that they are all gone are, the Pentagon official said.
But according to Ukrainian sources, some of the soldiers were taken to a Belarusian hospital that specializes in treating diseases triggered by exposure to nuclear radiation, as they would show acute symptoms of nuclear contamination.
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The soldiers according to reports by some workers at the plant to Reuters traversed and occupied the plant premises without adequate protection and without precautions (tourists arriving in the Chernobyl area were escorted by escorts equipped with Geiger counters to places where the radiation was too high ), and they even dug ditches in the “red forest” surrounding the facility.
(The “red forest” owes its name to the fact that the tree tops turned red from the radiation absorbed during the explosion of the plant’s reactor; according to the Reuters agency, not even the workers of the nuclear power plant were able to walk in this area. There is nobody,” Chernobyl general manager Valery Seda told Reuters. “For heaven’s sake, no, nobody goes there.”
According to Energoatom the Ukrainian national company that manages nuclear power plants Russian soldiers in the region in the Chernobyl “exclusion zone” are exposed to significant external and internal radiation.
As Kim Willsher points out in the Guardian, corroborating the story would show an astounding level of ignorance of the dangers of the “exclusion zone” or a criminal will on the part of Russian commanders to disorder their troops in an area devastated by the fourth reactor explosion on April 26, 1986 is still very dangerous.
Ukrainians working at Chernobyl quoted by the Guardian themselves described the arrival of soldiers without protective gear around the plant as a “suicidal mission”.
Ukraine hosts 15 nuclear reactors (of which 8 are currently operational) at 4 power plants: one of them, Zaporizhia, is currently under Russian control.
[3] Yemelyanenko quotes Belarusian TV on his Facebook page: Seven medical buses with people inside arrived at 12:20 p.m. in Homel, Belarus, at the Center for Radiological Medicine. They regularly bring Russian soldiers there. pic.twitter.com/ojMdRAsJ93
Victor Kovalenko (@MrKovalenko) March 30, 2022
Article is updated…
March 31, 2022 (Modified March 31, 2022 | 12:13 PM)
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