IAEA says no change in radiation levels following Friday drone strike
Ukrainian firefighters worked around the clock in freezing weather to completely extinguish small fires that still smouldered after Friday’s drone strike on the building containing the remains of the reactor destroyed in the 1986 Chernobyl accident, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general Rafael Grossi said on Saturday.
The IAEA team based at the site was granted unrestricted access to the site of the explosion and conducted an extensive walkdown to assess the damage to the New Safe Confinement (NSC), where the drone pierced a hole through the roof of the large arch-shaped structure built to prevent any radioactive release from the damaged reactor number four and protect it from external hazards.
The IAEA said efforts to put out and prevent the spread of any remaining fires – apparently fuelled by inflammable material in the roof cladding – have delayed work to start repairing the damage to the NSC, which was completed in 2019 on top of the sarcophagus that was erected in the immediate aftermath of the accident nearly four decades ago.
Despite significant damage caused by the drone impact, the IAEA team was told that there had been no change in the radiation levels at the site.
This was confirmed by the team’s own measurements which showed normal dose rate values near the NSC compared to those that the IAEA has recorded since it established a continuous presence at the site just over two years ago.
Grossi has repeatedly sounded the alarm about the continued risk of nuclear accidents as a result of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and energy infrastructure, including nuclear plants.
