The occupation of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine by the Russian army between February 24 and the end of March is very, very dangerous, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, condemned on Tuesday, April 26. The level of radioactivity is, I would say, abnormal, he added. We monitor all of this on a daily basis, he added.
On-site inspections and repairs
The situation is absolutely abnormal and very, very dangerous, Grossi told reporters during a visit to Chernobyl, 36 years to the day after the worst nuclear disaster in history in 1986.
The head of the UN organization will be accompanied on site by a team of experts to deliver vital equipment (dosimeters, protective suits, etc.) and to carry out radiological and other checks, the IAEA announced last Friday.
These experts need to fix the remote surveillance systems that stopped transmitting data to the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, shortly after the start of the war.
A gradual return to normal
The Chernobyl site, 150 kilometers north of Kyiv, had fallen into Russian hands on February 24, the first day of their invasion, and then suffered a blackout and blackout. The Russian soldiers withdrew there on March 31st.
Since then, the situation has gradually returned to normal, according to daily reports by the IAEA based on information from the Ukrainian regulator.
Rafael Grossi had already traveled to Ukraine at the end of March to lay the foundations for an agreement on technical assistance. He had visited the southern Yuzhno-Ukrainsk power plant before meeting senior Russian officials in Kaliningrad on the Baltic coast.
Ukraine has 15 reactors in four operating plants, in addition to waste storage sites such as the Chernobyl plant.
A Chernobyl reactor exploded in 1986, contaminating much of Europe, but primarily Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. The area within a radius of 30 kilometers around the plant, designated as the exclusion zone, is still heavily contaminated and it is forbidden to live there permanently.
According to the Atomic Energy Agency EXPAND, the radioactivity in Chernobyl is “abnormal”.