Ukrainian expert: Hundreds of Russian troops received lethal dose of radiation in Chernobyl

 Wednesday, April 6, 2022 

Ukraine’s Vice Minister for Protection of the Environment and Natural Resources, Ruslan Strelets, said hundreds of Russian troops were subjected to high levels of radiation after withdrawing from Ukraine’s Chernobyl exclusion zone.

During a TV news marathon, Strelets said his agency has uncovered hundreds of bunkers and dugouts in the exclusion zone, including in the infamous Red Forest, which is among the most contaminated area around Chernobyl and gets its name from the pine trees in the forest which turned red due to high levels of radiation.

“Our specialists say that if one spends 48 hours in the Red Forest he will receive a radiation dose similar to a radiation one receives over the course of year. That is, factually anyone who was stationed there– they are the walking dead, they are people who have no chances of a future life,” Strelets exclaimed.

The Russian forces stationed around Chernobyl are believed to have been there from February 25th through March 31st, far longer than the recommended time frame.

Reports surfaced in late March claiming that Russian forces in the Red Forest area eschewed radiation protection and kicked up clouds of radioactive dust by driving armored vehicles through the area. One Chernobyl employee told Reuters that such actions were “suicidal” for Russian soldiers.

Valery Seida, acting general director of the Chernobyl plant, said of the Red Forest, "Nobody goes there ... for God's sake. There is no one there… They [Russian soldiers] drove wherever they needed to.” Seida said Russian soldiers had been warned above the radiation levels but that there is no evidence to suggest that they heeded such warnings.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense released drone footage on Wednesday showing what appeared to be trenches dug by Russian soldiers in the exclusion zone.

Hundreds of Russian soldiers were reportedly taken to a medical facility in the Belarusian city of Gomel to be treated for radiation poisoning, according to an employee at the Public Council at the State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management.

Captured Technologies and Radiation Victims: What Does Russia Leave in Chernobyl?



Ekaterina Maksimova

April 3, 2022

The Russian military gained access to unique materials, databases and equipment after the seizure of Ukrainian nuclear facilities and scientific laboratories. This was told to The Insider by Ukrainian nuclear scientists. The troops took control of the Zaporozhye and Chernobyl nuclear power plants, as well as their satellite cities: Enerhodar and Slavutych. In Chernobyl itself, it was reported about the looting of the "Ecocenter" - an enterprise engaged in radiation and environmental control in the exclusion zone. Equipment worth more than 6 million euros was supplied there by the European Union and Japan in the framework of joint projects with Kiev. It could be of the greatest interest to the Russian military.

On March 31, Russia withdrew its troops from the territory of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which was captured on the first day of the war. This was told in "Energoatom" - the operator of all nuclear power plants in Ukraine. After a 36-day occupation, Russian troops moved towards Belarus. By Thursday evening, "not a single outsider remained on the territory of the Chernobyl NPP."

The invaders took with them the Ukrainian National Guardsmen, who had been held captive since February 24. And before leaving, the Employees of the Chernobyl NPP were forced to sign a document on the absence of claims to the Russian side - the so-called "Act of Reception and Transfer of Protection of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant".


This document was forced by the Russian military under pressure to sign the employees of the Chernobyl NPP
Photo: Facebook / State Agency of Ukraine for the Management of the Exclusion Zone


"These 'official' documents were signed by the station's staff under pressure to complete the process. The withdrawal of troops was accompanied by the looting of premises, as well as the theft of equipment and other valuable things," the State Agency of Ukraine for the Management of the Exclusion Zone reported.

Robbery of know-how of foreign companies

The fact that the main interest of the Russian military could be unique equipment, The Insider told An independent expert in the field of nuclear energy Olga Kosharnaya, in the past - a member of the Board of the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine.

On March 26, the Russian military took control of the town of Slavutych, located about 50 km from Chernobyl. Many employees of the station live there. There are several enterprises of interest to Russia in the city, the expert noted. The main one is Atomremontservice, which is a division of the operator of all nuclear power plants in Ukraine. The structure is engaged in the organization of repairs at the nuclear power plant. It uses equipment to restore equipment that does not exist in Russia and the countries of the former socialist camp.

"There is a special stand of the American company Westinghouse Electric to control the geometry of the dismantling of damaged fuel elements (fuel elements) and cassettes of nuclear fuel of this manufacturer," Kosharnaya said. "The use of the stand makes it possible to identify and remove leaky elements and repair them, after which the assembly can again be operated in the reactor core before the deadline."


Westinghouse Electric fuel assembly. Photo: energyland.info

Every year, due to the depressurization of fuel elements, fuel assemblies (FUEL) fail, in Russia in this case they are prematurely unloaded from the reactors and disposed of. And the use of special equipment allows you to extend their service life, which means that you can significantly save money, as well as increase radiation safety.

It became known that during the retreat of the Russian military, at least five containers with equipment that is used in the repair of equipment disappeared. Also in the city there are unique training facilities for personnel training, devices for welding, commissioning, equipment for turbines, pumps, ventilation mechanisms, heat exchange equipment for fittings. "There is a suspicion that this will end with the robbery of the know-how of foreign companies, their intellectual property," Olga Kosharnaya noted.

What happened at Ecocenter?

The Russian military also looted the Ecocenter in Chernobyl, a unique enterprise that carried out the largest volume of radioecological research in Ukraine and accumulated a huge database. It appeared in 1986 after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, when work began to eliminate the consequences of the disaster. Now "Ecocenter" belongs to the State Agency for the Management of the Exclusion Zone, which announced the seizure and looting of the enterprise on March 23.


View of the "Ecocenter". Photo by Facebook / Denis Vishnevsky

The key object of ecocenter is the Central Analytical Laboratory. The interlocutors of The Insider agree that, judging by the picture, the Russian military ruled here. Servers and hard drives have been ripped from computers. Olga Kosharnaya, an independent expert on nuclear energy, believes that the unique database on radiology and dosimetry, which have been collected here since the Chernobyl accident, is of particular value to Russia. All this volume of observations can now be destroyed.

Of particular value to Russia is the unique database on radiology and dosimetry collected since the Chernobyl accident: now it can be destroyed

"During the year, the laboratory collected about 5 thousand samples on a rigid system - air, water, soil, hydrobionts and much more. All this in the laboratory turned into 12 thousand results that showed the content of the main radionuclides (cesium, strontium and transuranic elements) in the selected samples. A key element in this process was the laboratory. Radiochemistry and spectrometry are very expensive and complex. Expensive equipment and consumables, expensive personnel who need to be prepared for this work for a long time, "writes Denis Vishnevsky, head of the scientific department of the Chernobyl Radiation and Ecological Biosphere Reserve.

Footage of the looted laboratory was also shown by the Russian media. They accused the Ukrainian side of "staging with the aim of discrediting the Russian military in the eyes of the public." In a story on Russia's state television channel Zvezda, one of the servicemen called the presence of radioactive samples in the laboratory a "crime," although the storage of samples is usually provided for in radioecological laboratories in Russia, Ukraine and other countries. Professor of the Institute of Radioecology of the University of Fukushima (Japan) Mark Zheleznyak told The Insider - the samples appeared in the course of research in the framework of the Japanese-Ukrainian project, in which he took part.

"There are a lot of dirty places in the zone. According to the rules, the samples were stored in special cabinets in the premises of the Ecocenter. We collected a lot of samples. After the study, the sample is still stored for further study, perhaps already other indicators. Each such laboratory has premises for the storage of samples, for that it is a laboratory. All sorts of IAEA commissions came there a hundred times, which checked this, and everything was in perfect order there, "said Professor Zheleznyak.



The laboratory of the "Ecocenter" before the invasion of the Russian military. 

Photo: Facebook / Denis Vishnevsky

Radioactive isotopes, which are used to calibrate instruments, have disappeared from the laboratory of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants. It is also located in Chernobyl. In addition, samples of radioactive waste have also disappeared, including those remaining after the meltdown of the reactor contents of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the head of the Institute, Anatoly Nosovsky, notes in an interview with science magazine. He fears that these highly radioactive substances can be used for provocations with a "dirty bomb". This does not exclude Mark Zheleznyak. It is enough to add to the explosives the radioactive contents of the 4th power unit, taken from under the sarcophagus. You can put this into action anywhere.

"In the wagon of the Russian army"

Speaking about the Russian military, experts note their unpreparedness for being in a polluted territory. The entire zone is a huge burial ground for radioactive waste. Right in the contaminated areas in the immediate vicinity of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the Russians deployed a command post and placed military equipment. Including old or unusable. According to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 165th artillery brigade from the Amur Region operated in Chernobyl. She received permission to use the equipment in a substandard condition. This increased the risk of detonation of ammunition during loading and unloading.

And according to Olga Kosharnaya, Russian soldiers were not provided even with individual dosimeters. Radioactive contamination is spotty, that is, at one point there may be a low dose rate, and in a few meters - tens of times higher. Moving in such conditions without a radiometer is extremely dangerous. You can easily get not only a high dose of radiation, but also inhale alpha-active particles, which, apparently, happened in the Red Forest, adjacent to the Chernobyl NPP.




Gamma radiation dose rate in the Red Forest area. The maximum level in the photo is 102 μSv / h with a norm of not more than 0.2 μSv / h. 2019. Heat map made with Atom Fast 8816 scintillation dosimeter

"Without dosimetric reconnaissance with their radiochemical defense troops, they began to dig trenches in the most polluted place of the zone – the Red Forest. There was a deposition of long-lived isotopes: plutonium, uranium, americium, which emit alpha radiation. When alpha particles enter the body, damage to the kidneys, lungs and other organs begins, very quickly this can lead to cancer, "the expert believes.

On March 30, Yaroslav Emelianenko, a member of the Public Council under the State Agency of Ukraine for the Management of the Exclusion Zone, reported that several Russian servicemen had been brought from Chernobyl to the Belarusian Center for Radiation Medicine in Gomel. It was reported that these soldiers received radiation. The data was confirmed by the State Agency of Ukraine for the Management of the Exclusion Zone, but the exact number of injured soldiers was not specified, and nothing is known about their condition. The Russian Defense Ministry did not comment on the data. The IAEA said it could not confirm the information and was waiting for additional data.

Why did the military eventually leave Chernobyl?

 In addition to the interest in equipment and data, the exclusion zone could be of interest to Russian troops as a springboard for a rapid offensive on Kiev, some experts say. In principle, a nuclear power plant is an ideal test site for the deployment of military equipment, since the enemy is highly likely not to conduct combat operations at a nuclear facility. Therefore, it was very easy to gain a foothold there, although unsafe in terms of radiation exposure - but the question of the well-being of soldiers, apparently, worries the Russian military leadership in the last place. From this point of view, it becomes clear that they decided to withdraw troops from Chernobyl against the background of abandoning plans to take Kiev. At the same time, the Russian military is not going to leave the territory of the ZNPP yet.

Restoring sensor operation

After the departure of Russian troops, Ukrainian specialists will first of all have to establish the operation of sensor systems that were turned off by the invaders. In particular, the Automatic Radiation Monitoring System (ASCRO). This is a system of dosimeters in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which in real time on the site show the level of dose rate of gamma radiation at different points of the zone.

Disabling the sensors created a dangerous situation. Fighting in the ChZO provoked forest fires in radiation-contaminated places. More than 10 hectares of forest were burning, Ukrainian ombudsman Lyudmila Denisova reported. This could be fraught with an increase in radiation levels, but without ASCRO it would not have been possible to find out about it.

Professor of the Institute of Environmental Radiology of the University of Fukushima Mark Zheleznyak told The Insider that specialists had to focus on the indicators of devices located at a distance of 100 km and further from the Chernobyl exclusion zone. These data showed only a rough picture.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CHERNOBYL 

Air quality levels in Ukraine dip to 'moderate' as fires continue to burn

By Christen McCurdy APRIL 18, 2020

Smog haze hangs over Kiev, Ukraine, on Friday. This week air quality in Ukraine ranked as worst in the world due to multiple fires burning in the country, including in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Photo by Sergey Dolzhenko/EPA-EFE

April 18 (UPI) -- Multiple wildfires spreading across Ukraine have burned 38 homes and 15.4 square miles of forest and forced residents to keep their windows shut due to air pollution.

On Friday and Saturday the concentration of dust and burning residues have at least doubled and may have increased fourfold, with concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and formaldehyde increasing by two or three times over typical amounts, the Kyiv Post reported.


Air quality levels in Ukraine this week have registered as the worst in the world.As of Saturday morning, Kiev's Air Quality Index ranged from 360 and 499 in different parts of the city, rated "hazardous," though markers had returned to a "moderate" rating by Saturday evening.

Meteorologists say air quality in Kiev, the country's capital and largest city, may improve early next week due to a predicted change in wind direction.

Kiev officials initially said smoke in the city was caused by fires in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, but Anatoly Prokopenko, deputy director of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Center, said fires in the Zhytomyr Oblast -- a large province in the north of Ukraine -- had caused Kiev to be blanketed in smoke since Thursday night.

By Saturday evening, six of 15 fires in the Zhytomyr Oblast forests had been extinguished and five more had been contained, said Volodymyr Demchuk, director of the emergency response at the State Emergency Service.

Firefighters were also trying to extinguish four fires in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The Chernobyl fires broke out April 4 and were considered contained by Tuesday, but flared up again Thursday due to high winds in the area.

A report released Wednesday by the French Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety Institute found elevated levels of radiation in the area, but Demchuk was quoted in the Kyiv Post on Saturday saying radiation was at a normal level.

Ukrainian officials: Fires out near Chernobyl nuclear plant

In this photo taken from the roof of Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant late Friday April 10, 2020, a forest fire is seen burning near the plant inside the exclusion zone. Ukrainian firefighters are labouring to put out two forest blazes in the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power station that was evacuated because of radioactive contamination after the 1986 explosion at the plant. (Ukrainian Police Press Office via AP)

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2020 


KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian emergency officials said Tuesday they have extinguished forest fires in the radiation-contaminated area near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but acknowledged that grass was still smoldering in some areas.

Hundreds of firefighters backed by aircraft have been battling several forest fires around Chernobyl for the past 10 days. They contained the initial blazes, but new fires raged closer to the decommissioned plant.

Emergencies Service chief Mykola Chechetkin reported to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that rains helped firefighters put out the flames, but acknowledged that it would take a few more days to extinguish smoldering grass.

Chechetkin said emergency workers have prevented the fire from engulfing radioactive waste depots and other facilities in Chernobyl.

The emergencies service said radiation levels in the capital, Kyiv, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the plant, were within norms.

On Monday, activists warned that the blazes were getting dangerously close to waste storage facilities.

Yaroslav Yemelyanenko, a member of the public council under the state agency in charge of the closed zone around the plant, said one fire was raging within 2 kilometers (about 1.2 miles) from one of the radioactive waste depots.

Last week, officials said they tracked down a person suspected of triggering the blaze by setting dry grass on fire in the area. The 27-year-old man said he burned grass “for fun” and then failed to extinguish the fire when the wind caused it to spread quickly.

On Monday, police said that another local resident burned waste and accidentally set dry grass ablaze, triggering another devastating forest fire. They said he failed to report the fire to the authorities.

The 2,600-square-kilometer (1,000-square-mile) Chernobyl Exclusion Zone was established after the April 1986 disaster at the plant that sent a cloud of radioactive fallout over much of Europe. The zone is largely unpopulated, although about 200 people have remained despite orders to leave.

Blazes in the area have been a regular occurrence. They often start when residents set dry grass on fire in the early spring — a widespread practice in Ukraine, Russia and some other ex-Soviet nations that often leads to devastating forest fires.

Copyright 2020 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Ukraine gov't: Fire under control near Chernobyl nuclear power station

Firefighters battle a wildfire in the exclusion zone near the Chernobyl nuclear power station on Friday. Photo by EPA-EFE

April 14 (UPI) -- The Ukrainian government said Tuesday a large fire burning in the "exclusion zone" near the Chernobyl nuclear power station is under control, but some witnesses say that doesn't appear to be true.

The Ukrainian interior ministry said there "were no open fires" remaining within the 18-mile zone that surrounds the plant, which was the site of one of the world's worst nuclear accidents in 1986.

Interior ministry officials said crews had dumped 500 tons of water onto the fire and there's only "a slight smoldering of the forest floor with separate cells" remaining. They said 500 people and 110 vehicles were sent into the exclusion zone to fight the blaze.

Background radiation in Kiev and the surrounding region is within normal limits, the ministry added.

Ukraine's State Agency on Exclusion Zone Management said in a Facebook post that fires were still burning in the Rossokha village, a scrapyard containing the irradiated emergency vehicles that responded to the accident.

A Chernobyl tour operator, however, said the fire is still out of control and has reached the abandoned city of Pripyat, less than two miles from a site where contaminated debris from the accident is stored.

The situation has raised some concern that radiation still contained the exclusion zone could be spread by the fire, which started on April 4.

The No. 4 reactor at Chernobyl exploded and experienced a core meltdown following a safety test at the plant on April 26, 1986. It's one of only two nuclear disasters rated at seven, the maximum level, on the International Nuclear Event Scale. More than 77,000 square miles in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, which in 1986 were all part of the Soviet Union, were seriously contaminated by radiation.

The disaster directly killed less than 50 people, mainly emergency first responders known as the Chernobyl "liquidators," but it's estimated that as many as 60,000 have died over the last three decades due to ailments related to the radiation fallout. Officials concluded design flaws at the plant contributed to the accident.

Scientists have said the area around the Chernobyl plant won't be habitable for 20,000 years.

Wildfire near Chernobyl releases spike in radiation
By Clyde Hughes

A wildfire near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, show following the April 26, 1986 explosion, burned 50 acres inside an established exclusion zone. UPI File Photo | License Photo

April 6 (UPI) -- A weekend wildfire in a forest inside the shuttered Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant's exclusion zone in Ukraine caused radiation to spike in the area.

The fire, which started Saturday, burned about 250 acres.

The National Police said the fire started "on dry grass and bushes" near the village of Vladimirovka. Firefighters made 42 water drops on the largest fires as 124 others battled smaller blazes started by the wildfire.

Police said 50 of the acres burned were inside the exclusion zone. No new fires were reported in the area as of Monday morning.

Yegor Firsov, Ukraine's ecological inspection service chief, said the fire caused radiation to spike.

"There is bad news -- in the center of the fire, radiation is above normal," Firsov said, posting a video of a Geiger counter on Facebook. "As you can see in the video, the readings of the device are 2.3, when the norm is 0.14. But this is only within the area of the fire outbreak."

He would later say the fire did not "affect the radiation situation" in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev and suburbs, so people should not be afraid to open windows there.

The police said it opened a criminal investigation into the fire for possible violations of fire safety requirements.

Vladimirovka is part of a deserted 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone established after the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant explosion that sent radioactive fallout across Europe and exposed millions to heightened levels of radiation.

Scientists Find Radiation-Eating Fungi At Chernobyl — And Now Seek To Harness Their Power

By Natasha Ishak

Published February 7, 2020

Scientists hope to use the fungi's abilities for those routinely exposed to radiation, like cancer patients, nuclear power plant engineers, and astronauts.

Abandoned Chernobyl Box Office

Getty Images

Since the Chernobyl nuclear explosion in 1986, species of fungi have been thriving off the radiation in these now-abandoned areas.

Whether it’s an asteroid or an ice age, planet Earth and its lifeforms always seem to find a way to carry on. Recently, scientists found that a few particularly impressive little lifeforms were even able to survive in an environment as harsh as Chernobyl.

The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster remains the worst such incident in recorded history and has killed thousands over the years. Even decades later, radiation in Chernobyl’s surrounding area lingers, but this hot spot has also become a mecca for a certain type of fungi.

According to Popular Mechanics, scientists discovered at least 200 species and 98 genera of fungi thriving off radiation at the infamous disaster site. The astounding discovery was first documented in 1991 when scientists found fungi growing on the walls of the abandoned nuclear reactor which was still covered in gamma radiation.

Stunned, researchers began studying the organisms, known as “black fungi” due to their concentrations of melanin, and found that three different species were living off of the gamma radiation. These strains, Cladosporium sphaerospermum, Cryptococcus neoformans, and Wangiella dermatitidis, were even all found to grow faster in the presence of the radiation and even grow toward it as if naturally drawn to it.

Black Fungus Being Tested

NASA/JPL/CALTECH

Strain of black fungi being tested in the lab.

“The fungi collected at the accident site had more melanin than the fungi collected from outside the exclusion zone,” Kasthuri Venkat, a senior researcher at NASA and the lead scientist on the agency’s space fungi project, told Vice.

“This means the fungi have adapted to the radiation activity and as many as twenty percent were found to be radiotrophic—meaning they grew towards the radiation; they loved it.”

Because the fungi contain so much melanin, they are able to feed off the gamma rays and convert them into chemical energy, kind of like a darker version of photosynthesis. This process is called radiosynthesis.

“The presumption has always been that we don’t know why truffles and other fungi are black,” explained Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist and co-author of the previous study. “If they have some primitive capacity to harvest sunlight or to harvest some kind of background radiation a lot of them would be using it.”

Chernobyl Disaster Workers Preparing For Cleanup IGOR KOSTIN, SYGMA/CORBIS “Liquidators” at the sight of the Chernobyl disaster preparing for cleanup, 1986.

This has led scientists to wonder whether the melanin in human skin cells could turn radiation into “food” too, but for now, they believe this is a stretch. However, they not ruling this possibility out for other lifeforms.

“The fact that it occurs in fungi raises the possibility that the same may occur in animals and plants,” Casadevall added. Scientists have thus been working to extract the radiation-absorbing power of Chernobyl’s fungi for the good of humankind in a number of ways.

One of these ways would be finding an application for the fungi’s capabilities in protecting those routinely exposed to radiation, like cancer patients and nuclear power plant engineers. Scientists also hope that the fungi could be used to develop a biological source of energy via radiation conversion.

Aerial View Of Reactor 4 In 1986 SHONE/GAMMA/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

View of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the explosion. April 26, 1986.

Meanwhile, another proposed application for the powers of these fungi lies in space travel.

In 2016, SpaceX and NASA sent a package to the International Space Station (ISS) containing several strains of fungi from Chernobyl. The shipment also included more than 250 different tests for the space crew to carry out.

Why space? The molecular changes that researchers observed in the Chernobyl fungi were brought on by the stress created from exposure to the site’s radiation. Researchers hoped to replicate this reaction in space, where they planned to expose the fungi to the stresses of microgravity and compare them with similar strains of fungi from Earth.

The results of the NASA study could have great benefits for future space travel, possibly allowing astronauts a way to protect themselves from deadly amounts of cosmic radiation. Findings from these investigations aboard the ISS will soon be published in an upcoming paper.

Scientists In Lab  NASA/JPL/CALTECH Kasthuri Venkateswaran and interns examining radiation-eating fungi.

It’s not just fungi that have been able to flourish so effectively despite the radiation. Over the years, scientists have found an abundance of wildlife thriving in Chernobyl’s former Red Zone and at the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

In Chernobyl and across Earth’s most dangerous zones of radioactivity, life keeps finding a way to adapt to even the harshest of environments.

Next, take a look at haunting photos of Chernobyl today after being frozen in time by the nuclear meltdown and read about Anatoly Dyatlov, the man behind the Chernobyl disaster.

Fact check: 5 myths about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster

Monday marks the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. What happened in the former Soviet Union on April 26, 1986, is no longer a secret.


The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is off-limits to most people

Is Chernobyl the biggest-ever nuclear disaster?

The 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near the city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine is often described as the worst nuclear accident in history. However, rarely is this sensational depiction clarified in more detail.

The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) does classify nuclear events on a scale of zero to seven, breaking them down into accidents, incidents and anomalies. It was introduced in 1990 after being developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (NEA/OECD). Level seven denotes a "major accident," which means "major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures."

Watch video 01:59 Ukraine still dealing with Chernobyl aftermath

Both the Chernobyl and 2011 Fukushima disaster have been categorized as such. But INES does not allow for nuclear events to be classified within a level.

If the term nuclear disaster is not only used to describe events, or accidents, in nuclear reactors but also radioactive emissions caused by humans then there are many occasions when human-caused nuclear contamination has been greater than that of the Chernobyl disaster, explained Kate Brown, professor of science, technology and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Let's take the production of plutonium," she told DW, referring to the American and Soviet plants that produced plutonium at the center of a nuclear bomb. "Those plants each issued as part of the normal working everyday order at least 350 million curies [a unit of radioactivity — Editor's note] into the surrounding environment. And that was not an accident.

Some parts of the exclusion zone will continue to be contaminated for some 24,000 years

"Let's look at, even more dire, the issuance of radioactive fallout in the detonation of nuclear bombs during the periods of nuclear testing ground, which were located throughout the world, " she continued. "Those just take one isotope, one radioactive iodine, which is harmful to human health because it's taken up by the human thyroid, causing thyroid cancer or thyroid disease.

"Chernobyl issued 45 million curies of radioactive iodine just in two years of testing, in 1961 and 1962. The Soviets and the Americans issued not 45 million curies, but 20 billion curies of radioactive iodine," she said. And these tests, she added, were by design — not due to an accident or human error.

Are there mutants in the exclusion zone?

One of the most popular questions for tour guides in the , the area around the former nuclear reactor, is whether there are mutants. Computer games, horror films and books have propagated this notion, but it is misguided.

Denis Vishnevsky, head of the department of ecology, flora and fauna of the Chernobyl Radiation and Ecological Biosphere Reserve, reassured DW that he had never seen any two-headed wolves or five-legged rodents.

Animals living in the exclusion zone may have a lower life expectancy

"The influence of ionizing radiation may cause some restructuring in the body, but mostly it simply reduces an organism's viability," he explained, giving the example of high embryo fatalities in rodents due to genomic defects that prevented the organism from functioning. Those animals that survive the womb sometimes have disabilities that prevent them from staying alive in the wild. Vishnevsky and his colleagues have conducted research into thousands of animals in the exclusion zone, but have not found any unusual morphological alterations.

"Why? Because we were always dealing with animals that had survived and had won the fight for survival," he said. He added that it was difficult to compare these animals with creatures that scientists had deliberately exposed to radiation in laboratories.
Has nature reclaimed the site of the disaster?

Reports entitled "Life Flourishing Around Chernobyl" and photo series suggesting that the exclusion zone has become a "natural paradise" might give the impression that nature has recovered from the nuclear disaster. But Brown, who has been researching Chernobyl for 25 years, is adamant that this is "not true."

"That's a very seductive idea, that human messed up nature and all they have to do is step away and nature rewrites itself," she said. In reality, however, biologists say that there are fewer species of insects, birds and mammals than before the disaster. The fact that some endangered species can be found in the exclusion zone is not evidence of the area's health and vitality.

Watch video 03:45 Nature is taking back Chernobyl

On the contrary: there has been a significant increase in the mortality rate and a lowered life expectancy in the animal population, with more tumors and immune defects, disorders of the blood and circulatory system and early ageing.

Scientists have attributed the apparent natural diversity to species migration and the vastness of the area. "The exclusion zone comprises 2,600 square kilometers [about 1,000 square miles]. And to the north are another 2,000 square kilometers to the north is Belarus' exclusion zone," said Vishnevsky. "There are also areas to the east and west where the human population density is extremely low. We have a huge potential for preserving local wild fauna." That includes lynxes, bears and wolves which need a great deal of space.

But even 35 years after the disaster the land is still contaminated by radiation, a third of it by transuranium elements with a half-life of more than 24,000 years.
Is it safe for tourists to visit Chernobyl?

The exclusion zone was already a magnet for disaster tourists, but in 2019 annual numbers doubled to 124,000 after the success of the HBO miniseries Chernobyl. The State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management has set up a number of routes so tourists can visit the region by land, water or air. It has also drawn up a number of regulations to protect visitors, stipulating that people must be covered from head to toe. They shouldn't eat any food or drink outside, and they should always follow official paths. It's estimated that the radiation dose received over a one-day visit does not exceed 0.1 millisievert (mSv) — roughly the same dose that a passenger would be exposed to on a long-distance flight from Germany to Japan, according to Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection.

Some medical uses might expose a patient to much higher doses. Sven Dokter, the spokesman for the German nuclear safety organization Global Research for Safety (GRS), said that the dose of an effective pelvic X-ray ranged from 0.3 to 0.7 mSv, while a CT scan of the chest ranged from 4 to 7 mSv.

Watch video 05:23 Chernobyl as a tourist attraction

Dokter said a visit to the exclusion zone would not cause any undue harm if visitors paid attention to the rules and took an official tour.

"We're a long way off from the doses needed for a warning against such visits to be issued," he told DW. "On average in Germany a person receives a radiation dose of over 4 mSv per year. Half of this is from the natural radiation that we're always exposed to and the other half comes from standard medical procedures and flights."

The IAEA also has no qualms: "One may certainly visit the Chernobyl area, including even the exclusion zone, which is a 30-kilometer radius surrounding the plant, all of whose reactors are now closed. Although some of the radioactive isotopes released into the atmosphere still linger (such as Strontium-90 and Caesium-137), they are at tolerable exposure levels for limited periods of time," said the organization's website.
Are there people living in the area?

Today, Pripyat, the closed city built to serve the nuclear plant and house its employees, is often described as a ghost town, as is the nearby city of Chernobyl.

However, neither has been entirely empty since 1986. Thousands of people, usually men, have stayed there, often working two-week shifts and ensuring that the crucial infrastructure in both cities continues to function. After the explosion in reactor No. 4, reactors 1, 2 and 3 continued to operate, closing down only in 1991, 1996 and 2000. Special units of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry police the zone. There are also stores and at least two hotels in Chernobyl, which are mainly for business visitors.

There are also a number of unofficial inhabitants, including people who used to live in the area and have chosen to return. They have settled in villages that were evacuated after the disaster. The exact number of people is unknown: when DW asked the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management how many people lived in Chernobyl, the official answer was "nobody."

In 2016, about 180 people were thought to be living in the entire exclusion zone. Because they tended to be older, this number may well have fallen. Even though these locals are officially only tolerated, the state does support them in their everyday lives. Their pensions are delivered once a month, and every two to three months they are supplied with food by a mobile store.

This article has been translated from German.

CHERNOBYL: THE PEOPLE WHO'VE STAYED

The contagious optimism of Baba Gania

Baba Gania (left) is 86 years old. She survived her husband who died a decade ago. For the past 25 years, Gania has taken care of her mentally disabled sister Sonya (right). "I am not afraid of radiation. I boil the mushrooms till all the radiation is gone!" she says proudly. Photographer Alina Rudya visited her several times over the past years: "She is the warmest and kindest person I know."  PHOTOS 12345678910

Mutant wolves roaming Chernobyl Exclusion Zone have developed cancer-resilient abilities: study

Allie Griffin
Thu, February 8, 2024 



Howl about that?

Mutant wolves that roam the human-free Chernobyl Exclusion Zone have developed cancer-resilient genomes that could be key to helping humans fight the deadly disease, according to a study.

The wild animals have managed to adapt and survive the high levels of radiation that have plagued the area after a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant exploded in 1986, becoming the world’s worst nuclear accident.

Humans abandoned the area after the explosion leaked cancer-causing radiation into the environment, and a 1,000-square-mile zone was roped off to prevent further human exposure.

But in the nearly 38 years since the nuclear disaster, wildlife has reclaimed the area — including packs of wolves that seem to be unaffected by the chronic exposure to the radiation.

Scientists examine a wolf in the Chernobyl zone, measuring the radioactive contamination levels. PBS

A nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant exploded in 1986, becoming the worst nuclear accident in history. Getty Images

Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist and ecotoxicologist in Shane Campbell-Staton’s lab at Princeton University, has been studying how the mutant wolves have evolved to survive their radioactive environment and presented her findings at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle, Washington, last month.

In 2014, Love and her colleagues went inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and put GPS collars equipped with radiation dosimeters on the wild wolves.

They also took blood from the animals to understand their responses to the cancer-causing radiation, according to a release published by the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology.

With the specialized collars, the researchers can get real-time measurements of where the wolves are and how much radiation they are exposed to, Love said.

Wolves wonder freely inside the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. REUTERS

They learned that the wolves are exposed to 11.28 millirem of radiation daily for their lifespans — more than six times the legal safety limit for humans.

The Chernobyl wolves’ immune systems appeared different than normal wolves’ — similar to those of cancer patients going through radiation treatment, the researchers found.

Love pinpointed specific regions of the wolf genome that seem to be resilient to increased cancer risk, the release states.

The research could be key to examining how gene mutations in humans could increase the odds of surviving cancer — flipping the script on many known gene mutations, like BRCA, that cause cancer.

Chernobyl dogs — the descendants of former residents’ pets — may also possess similar cancer resilence, though they haven’t been studied the same way as their wild cousins.

Wolves have continued to breed in the Chernobyl zone, making lair inside abandoned house. adventure – stock.adobe.com

The Chernobyl wolves’ immune systems appeared different than normal wolves’ — similar to those of cancer patients going through radiation treatment, the researchers found. adventure – stock.adobe.com

Dogs were immediately in the area after the disaster and have adapted better than other species — like birds, which experienced extreme genetic defects as a result of the toxic radiation.

The findings are especially valuable as scientists have learned that canines fight off cancer more similarly to the way humans do than lab rats.

Unfortunately, Love’s work has stalled somewhat as she and her colleagues have been unable to return to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone — first due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and now due to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.

The big wheel in the abandoned city of Pripyat, Chernobyl. Graham Harries/Shutterstock

An abandonded summer camp, Pripyat, Chernobyl. Graham Harries/Shutterstock

Chernobyl fires still burning on anniversary of accident

Fires are still blazing near the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has visited firefighters trying to extinguish the flames, marking the 34th anniversary of the accident.

More than 1,000 firefighters were working on Sunday to contain wildfires in the radiation-contaminated Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine. Sunday marks the 34-year anniversary of Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

"On this day we bow our heads to the blessed memory of those heroes who saved the future from the danger of radiation," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who visited the firefighters on Sunday, said in a statement to mark the anniversary.

He also expressed "deep respect" for the firefighters and others currently working in the zone to protect the lands from new disasters.

Firefighters have been fighting the forest fires since they broke out at the start of April. They have been raging largely around the sealed-off zone near the Chernobyl plant.

Read more: Chernobyl in Ukraine: Firefighters battling radioactive forest

Environmental experts feared the fires could stir up radioactive ash and potentially blow contaminated smoke to the capital, Kyiv — about 100 kilometers (62 miles) away from the power plant. But authorities have assured that radiation levels in the city are within an acceptable range.

On Sunday, firefighters were focusing on the "containment of two cells" of smoldering trees and brush, the State Emergency Service said in a statement.

Around 11.5 thousand hectares have been destroyed by the fires, said Zelenskiy in a tweet on Sunday. The damage was "terrible" he added.

The tweet was accompanied by a photograph of the president meeting a firefighter at the site while observing coronavirus hygiene protocol — they were pictured wearing masks and bumping fists rather than shaking hands.


Anniversary of a disaster

Chernobyl was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster when the No. 4 reactor exploded on April 26, 1986. The explosion caused large quantities of radioactive material to disperse in the atmosphere. The cloud of radioactive dust was sent over much of Europe.

Radiation from the accident is still present in the 2,600-square-kilometer (1,000-square-mile) exclusion zone that was set up around the site.

Tens of thousands of people were forced to relocate in the wake of the disaster, and several people died. Fires in the zone are a regular occurrence.

Ukrainian authorities believe the current fires may have been deliberately lit.

kmm/aw (dpa, AP)



CHERNOBYL: THE PEOPLE WHO'VE STAYED
The contagious optimism of Baba Gania

Baba Gania (left) is 86 years old. She survived her husband who died a decade ago. For the past 25 years, Gania has taken care of her mentally disabled sister Sonya (right). "I am not afraid of radiation. I boil the mushrooms till all the radiation is gone!" she says proudly. Photographer Alina Rudya visited her several times over the past years: "She is the warmest and kindest person I know."

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Chernobyl: Ukraine crews extinguish forest fires in exclusion zone

Firefighters worked for 10 days to extinguish fires that broke out in the forest around the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Ukrainian officials say they've tracked down two men who are believed to be behind the blazes. (14.04.2020)

Chernobyl: Radioactive forest near nuclear plant catches fire

A fire has broken out in a Ukrainian forest within the thousand-square-mile exclusion zone of the abandoned nuclear power plant at Chernobyl. Two firefighting planes and a helicopter were deployed to the scene. (04.04.2020) 

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Russian soldiers at Chernobyl spent a month sleeping in a radioactive forest, exposed themselves to potentially dangerous levels of radiation, and ignored their own nuclear experts: report


Kelsey Vlamis
Sat, April 9, 2022

Maxar satellite imagery closeup of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine on March 10, 2022.  Maxar Technologies 


Russian troops took over Chernobyl on February 24, the first day of the invasion of Ukraine.


The soldiers may have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, according to reports.


Ukraine retook control of the plant last week after Russian troops retreated from areas around Kyiv.

Russian soldiers seem to have had a laissez-faire attitude while stationed in Ukraine at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant – one of the most toxic places on Earth.

Since one of the worst-ever nuclear disasters occurred at the plant in 1986, it has been dangerously contaminated with radioactivity. Chernobyl was taken over by Russian forces on February 24, the first day of the invasion, prompting international concern. Ukraine retook control last week after Russia retreated from the areas surrounding Kyiv.

Valeriy Simyonov, the chief safety engineer at Chernobyl, told The New York Times that Russian troops who took over the plant "came and did whatever they wanted" in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. He said the Russian military brought its own nuclear experts to the plant but their advice was not always taken.

For instance, Russian troops dug into toxic soil and camped out for weeks in the radioactive forest, The Times reported, adding there have not been confirmed cases of radiation sickness but that some health impacts of nuclear exposures can take years to appear.

In another instance, a Russian soldier picked up cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope, with his bare hands, The Times reported.

Ukrainian officials shared video on Wednesday they said showed Russia dug trenches in Chernobyl's radioactive "Red Forest," calling it a "complete neglect of human life, even of one's own subordinates."



Energoatom, Ukraine's state power company, also said Russian troops dug trenches and experienced signs of radiation sickness, prompting an investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations watchdog group.

Russian soldiers in Chernobyl 'picked up radioactive material with bare hands' and contaminated inside of plant

Rozina Sabur

TELEGRAM
Sat, April 9, 2022

WORD OF THE DAY

A dosimetrist measures the level of radiation around trenches dug by the Russian military in an area with high levels of radiation called the Red Forest - Gleb Garanich/Reuters

Russian soldiers who seized control of Chernobyl spread radioactive material around the plant, its staff have said, while one soldier even picked up a source of radiation with his bare hands.

Employees at the power plant have described how Russian soldiers, who seized the plant for a month in late February, may have been exposed to potentially harmful doses of radiation, which brings a high risk of cancer and other health issues, even decades later. One soldier is already reported to have died.

Drone footage released by the Ukrainian military revealed that the soldiers dug trenches in the nearby Red Forest, to this day one of the most radioactive places on earth at the site of one of the world's worst nuclear disasters

Journalists discovered food wrappings, military gear and even a blackened cooking pot, suggesting the Russian troops had spent an extended period of time in the trenches.

A room in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, where Ukrainian National Guard servicemen were held as hostages - MIKHAIL PALINCHAK/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

One Russian military ration box found at the site exhibited radiation levels 50 times above naturally occurring values, CNN reported.

There was also evidence of a recent fire in the area, suggesting the soldiers were exposed to radioactive smoke along with dust from the disturbed ground.

Staff at the Chernobyl Power Plant said the Russian soldiers contaminated the power plant with radioactive material they carried back from the forest on their shoes.

The radiation levels increased at the power plant as a result, staff said.

"It's crazy, really," Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko told CNN. "I really have no idea why they did it.

"But we can see they went in there, the soldiers who went there, came back here and the level of radiation increased."

Officials at the plant said the increased radiation levels were only slightly above what the World Nuclear Association describes as naturally occurring radiation. But while a one-time contact may not be dangerous, continuous exposure poses a health hazard.

In one particularly ill-advised incident, a Russian soldier handled a source of cobalt-60 at one waste storage site with his bare hands, according to Valeriy Simyonov, the site's chief safety engineer.

He exposed himself to so much radiation in a few seconds that it went off the scales of a Geiger counter, Mr Simyonov said. It was not clear what happened to the soldier.

Trenches dug by the Russian military are seen in an area with high levels of radiation called the Red Forest - Gleb Garanich /Reuters

While Chernobyl is not an active power station, its staff maintain the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster to avoid further radiation leaks.

Russian forces surrounded the area in late February, taking the Ukrainian soldiers guarding the plant hostage.

The Russians held the plant for a month but the site is now back under Ukraine's control.

Access to the site opened this week, providing evidence of how little regard the Russian soldiers had for nuclear safety.

During a visit to Chernobyl on Friday, Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's former president, said that Putin's invasion of the site showed that Russia remained a real threat to the rest of Europe.

"Nuclear smoke is not limited by borders. It can reach Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and even Great Britain. The danger of nuclear contamination of Europe is very high, while Russia continues this war," he said.

What Does a Dosimetrist Do? | Indeed.com

https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/dosimetrist

2021-07-23 · Dosimetrists are medical professionals who work in radiation oncology helping to care for cancer patients. Among their various job responsibilities, a dosimetrist has the important

Russian Blunders in Chernobyl: 'They Came and Did Whatever They Wanted.'

Andrew E. Kramer and Ivor Prickett

NEW YORK TIMES
Sat, April 9, 2022

LONG READ 

A crushed car and other debris litter a main intersection on Thursday, April 7, 2022, in the town of Chernobyl, Ukraine, where Russian forces established a staging ground for the assault on Kyiv. (Ivor Prickett/The New York Times)

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — As the staging ground for an assault on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, one of the most toxic places on Earth, was probably not the best choice. But that did not seem to bother the Russian generals who took over the site in the early stages of the war.

“We told them not to do it, that it was dangerous, but they ignored us,” Valeriy Simyonov, chief safety engineer for the Chernobyl nuclear site, said in an interview.

Apparently undeterred by safety concerns, the Russian forces tramped about the grounds with bulldozers and tanks, digging trenches and bunkers — and exposing themselves to potentially harmful doses of radiation lingering beneath the surface.

In a visit to the recently liberated nuclear station — site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, in 1986 — wind blew swirls of dust along the roads, and scenes of disregard for safety were everywhere, although Ukrainian nuclear officials say no major radiation leak was triggered by Russia’s monthlong military occupation.

At just one site of extensive trenching a few hundred yards outside the town of Chernobyl, the Russian army had dug an elaborate maze of sunken walkways and bunkers. An abandoned armored personnel carrier sat nearby.

The soldiers had apparently camped out for weeks in the radioactive forest. Although international nuclear safety experts say they have not confirmed any cases of radiation sickness among the soldiers, the cancers and other potential health problems associated with radiation exposure might not develop until decades later.

Simyonov said the Russian military had deployed officers from a nuclear, biological and chemical unit, as well as experts from Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear power company, who consulted with the Ukrainian scientists.

But the Russian nuclear experts seemed to hold little sway over the army commanders, he said. The military men seemed more preoccupied with planning the assault on Kyiv and, after that failed, using Chernobyl as an escape route to Belarus for their badly mauled troops.

“They came and did whatever they wanted” in the zone around the station, Simyonov said. Despite efforts by him and other Ukrainian nuclear engineers and technicians who remained at the site through the occupation, working around-the-clock and unable to leave except for one shift change in late March, the entrenching continued.

The earthworks were not the only instance of recklessness in the treatment of a site so toxic that it still holds the potential to spread radiation well beyond Ukraine’s borders.

In a particularly ill-advised action, a Russian soldier from a chemical, biological and nuclear protection unit picked up a source of cobalt-60 at one waste storage site with his bare hands, exposing himself to so much radiation in a few seconds that it went off the scales of a Geiger counter, Simyonov said. It was not clear what happened to the man, he said.

The most concerning moment, Simyonov said, came in mid-March, when electrical power was cut to a cooling pool that stores spent nuclear fuel rods that contain many times more radioactive material than was dispersed in the 1986 catastrophe. That raised the concern among Ukrainians of a fire if the water cooling the fuel rods boiled away, exposing them to the air, although that prospect was quickly dismissed by experts. “They’re emphasizing the worst-case scenarios, which are possible but not necessarily plausible,” said Edwin Lyman, a reactor expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The greater risk in a prolonged electricity shut-off, experts say, was that hydrogen generated by the spent fuel could accumulate and explode. Bruno Chareyron, laboratory director at CRIIRAD, a French group that monitors radiation risks, cited a 2008 study of the Chernobyl site suggesting this could happen within about 15 days.

Eventually, however, electricity was restored to the plant, allaying any fears.

The march to Kyiv on the western bank of the Dnieper River began and ended in Chernobyl for the 31st and 36th Combined Arms Armies of the Russian military, which traveled with an auxiliary of special forces and ethnic Chechen combatants.

The formation surged into Ukraine on Feb. 24, fought for most of a month in the suburbs of Kyiv and then retreated, leaving in its wake incinerated armored vehicles, its own war dead, widespread destruction and evidence of human rights abuses, including hundreds of civilian bodies on the streets in the town of Bucha.

As they retreated from Chernobyl, Russian troops blew up a bridge in the exclusion zone and planted a dense maze of anti-personnel mines, trip wires and booby traps around the defunct station. Two Ukrainian soldiers have stepped on mines in the past week, according to the Ukrainian government agency that manages the site.

In a bizarre final sign of the unit’s misadventures, Ukrainian soldiers found discarded appliances and electronic goods on roads in the Chernobyl zone. These were apparently looted from towns deeper inside Ukraine and cast off for unclear reasons in the final retreat. Reporters found one washing machine on a road shoulder just outside the town of Chernobyl.

Employees of the exclusion zone management agency based in Chernobyl suffered under the Russian occupation, but nothing approaching the barbarity visited on civilians in Bucha and other towns around Kyiv by the Russian forces.

The Russians had come in seemingly endless columns on the first day of the war, said Natasha Siloshenko, 45, a cook at a cafeteria serving nuclear workers. She had watched, warily, from a side street.

“There was a sea of vehicles,” she said. “They came in waves through the zone, driving fast toward Kyiv.”

There was little or no combat in the zone, so far as she could tell. The armored columns merely passed through.

During the occupation, Russian soldiers searched the apartments of nuclear technicians and engineers, firefighters and support staff in the town of Chernobyl. “They took valuable items” from apartments, she said, but there was little violence.

Workers tried to caution the Russians about radiation risks, to little avail.

The background radiation in most of the 18-mile exclusion zone around the nuclear plant, after 36 years, poses scant risks and is about equivalent to a high-altitude airplane flight. But in invisible hot spots, some covering an acre or two, some just a few square yards, radiation can soar to thousands of times normal ambient levels.

A soldier in such a spot would be exposed every hour to what experts consider a safe limit for an entire year, said Chareyron, the nuclear expert. The most-dangerous isotopes in the soil are cesium-137, strontium-90 and various isotopes of plutonium. Days or weeks spent in these areas bring a high risk of causing cancer, he said.

Throughout the zone, radioactive particles have settled into the soil to a depth of a few inches to a foot. They pose little threat if left underground, where their half-lives would tick by mostly harmlessly for decades or hundreds of years.

Until the Russian invasion, the main threat posed by this contamination was its absorption into mosses and trees that can burn in wildfires, disseminating the poisons in smoke, or through birds that eat radioactive, ground-dwelling insects.

“We told them, ‘This is the zone, you cannot go to certain places,’” Siloshenko said the workers had told the Russians. “They ignored us.”

At one dug-in position, Russian troops had burrowed a bunker from the sandy side of a road embankment and left heaps of trash — food wrappings, discarded boots, a blackened cooking pot — suggesting they had lived in the underground space for an extended time.

Nearby, a bulldozer had scraped away the topsoil to build berms for artillery emplacements and a half-dozen foxholes.

The forest around had recently burned, suggesting a fire had swept over the area during the Russian occupation, adding radioactive smoke to the exposure of the Russian soldiers, along with dust from disturbed ground.

The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, issued a statement Thursday saying the agency had been unable to confirm reports of Russian soldiers sickened by radiation in the zone or to make an independent assessment of the radiation levels at the site. The agency’s automated radiation sensors in Chernobyl have been inoperable for more than a month, he said.

The Ukrainian government’s radiation monitors ceased working the first day of the war, said Kateryna Pavlova, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Chernobyl Zone Management Agency. Readings from satellites, she said, showed slightly elevated radiation in some areas after the Russian occupation.

Armored vehicles that run on treads, rather than wheels, pose the primary risk for radiation safety in a wider area, as they churn up the radioactive soil and spread it into areas of Belarus and Russia as they retreat, Pavlova said. “The next person who comes along can be contaminated,” she said.

Although the five-day cutoff in electricity did not lead to any disasters, it was still cause for enormous anxiety among the plant’s operators, said Sergei Makluk, a shift supervisor interviewed at the nuclear station Thursday evening.

The backup generators that kicked in require about 18,000 gallons of diesel fuel a day. In the first days, Russian officers assured plant employees that they would have enough fuel, drawn from the supplies being trucked in for armored vehicles in the fighting in the Kyiv suburbs, Makluk said. But by the fifth day, with the military’s well-documented logistical problems, the officers said they would no longer supply the diesel.

“They said, ‘There’s not enough fuel for the front,’” and that a power cable leading to Belarus should be used to draw electricity from the Belarusian grid to cool the waste pool instead.

Simyonov, the chief safety engineer, characterized the threat to halt diesel supplies for generators as “blackmail” to force the authorities in Belarus to resolve the problem. However it happened, the electricity was restored in time and the nuclear fuel never came close to overheating.

All in all, the trench digging and other dubious activities posed a far-lower risk than the waste pool, and most of that to the Russian soldiers themselves, Simyonov said, adding wryly: “We invite them back to dig more trenches here, if they want.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

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