Occupation of Chernobyl by the Russian army: why the radiation rate has increased since yesterday?

It’s been official for a few hours. Russian forces seized Chernobyl and its power plant this Thursday, February 24, 2022. The one everyone knows as the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history. Yet the plant’s last reactor was shut down more than 20 years ago. It was December 15, 2000, to be exact. So why this attack and is there something to fear on this side?

“It is impossible to say that the nuclear plant of Chernobyl is safe”, Ukrainian presidential adviser Myhailo Podolyak said yesterday. What sow a little more doubt in the minds.

And the publications of the Ukrainian parliament are further fueling this fear this morning. They report an increase in radiation — gamma radiation, in particular — on the Chernobyl site exclusion zone. A prohibited zone that extends over several thousand square kilometers.

Facilities still intact

In a press release, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirms that it is monitoring the situation very closely. However, it notes that the Russian attack does not seem to have caused any damage to the installation. Suggesting that the New Safe Containmenta sarcophagus placed on the reactor No. 4 a few years ago to seal the materials radiation continues — for now at least — to play its part. Ditto for facilities that store nuclear waste.

Why, then, would an increase in radiation have been observed? According to several experts, including those from the State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine, it could very well be ” simply “ due to highly contaminated soil that must have been disturbed by the movements troops, tanks and helicopters that have maneuvered in the area in recent hours, releasing radioactive dust into the air. But if these radiations could thus have exceeded the “levels of control”they do not seem, however, to have reached a truly worrying level – which in addition, would very likely not be ” only “ than for the local population.

The soldiers – both Ukrainian and Russian – present on the site – and the Ukrainian employees who would be held there as hostages -, on the other hand, could be overexposed if they were to stay too long in areas of high radiation. To be continued…

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a strategic target

In the meantime, it remains to be understood why the Russian troops searched, in the very first hours of the war. To scare, of course. Because attacking a nuclear plant, was she stopped, it’s always scary. And a little more, no doubt when it comes to the already infamous Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

But also, and perhaps even above all, according to the experts, because the site remains strategic for the electrical network. It would even constitute a neuralgic point of the network high tension from Eastern Europe. A carries of entry, in particular, to the Belarusian network.

On the other hand, the idea which ran that the Russians hope to seize the used nuclear fuel stored on the site to manufacture a so-called dirty bomb seems rather far-fetched. Firstly because the Russians have everything they need to design such a bomb, if they wish. A stock ofuranium and of plutonium of military quality, whereas the fuel from the Chernobyl reactors is only enriched to a few small percent and it takes fuel enriched to more than 90% to make a atomic bomb. Not to mention the nuclear arsenal that Russia already has…