IAEA warned that Russia puts Chernobyl nuclear plant personnel at risk

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warns that Russian troops bombed Ukrainian checkpoints in Slavutich, a city near the nuclear plant where Chernobyl personnel work.

Ukraine's regulatory authority warned that the attack endangered “the homes and families of operational personnel who ensure nuclear and radiation safety”, according to a statement from the organization.

The director of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, expressed his concern, as these attacks occur a few days after the technical personnel of the nuclear power plant were able to rotate and rest after almost four weeks without changing shifts.

This city is located outside the Exclusion Zone that was established around the nuclear power plant after the 1986 accident. The IAEA warned on Wednesday that the fire brigade in the city of Chernobyl extinguished four forest fires near the nuclear power plant.

The Ukrainian State Agency for the Management of Exclusion Zones reported this week that Russian troops have destroyed a laboratory for radioactive waste management at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, occupied at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine.

According to this center, the laboratory cost more than 6 million euros, was located in the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and was a complex with “significant analytical and research capabilities” in the field of radioactive waste management.

The laboratory was built in 2015 with the help of EU funds for nuclear safety cooperation and, according to the statement, had equipment and analytical capabilities unique in Europe.

According to the Ukrainian statement, in the laboratory there were “highly active samples and samples of radionuclides that are now in the hands of the enemy”.

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, after the 1986 accident, the most important in history for this type of energy, is not operational but still requires control, analysis and surveillance tasks.

The Russian army occupied the plant, located north of Kiev, on 24 February and has been a cause of concern, along with the rest of the nuclear power plants in Ukraine, for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), since the personnel working there were detained without possibility of rest.

As reported by the IAEA, it was only last Sunday that the first rotation of personnel at the former Chernobyl nuclear plant since the start of the Russian invasion nearly a month ago was completed, allowing nearly two hundred technicians and security personnel from the plant to return to their homes to rest.

(With information from Europa Press)

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