Dirty bomb ingredients ‘disappear’ from Chernobyl after Russian troops seize the plant

INGREDIENTS that could be used to build a “dirty bomb” “disappeared” in Chernobyl.

Russian soldiers stormed the nuclear power plant on March 9 and held workers at gunpoint in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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In the Russian advance, “looters” raided a radiation monitoring lab in the village of Chernobyl and are said to have made off with radioactive isotopes used to calibrate instruments and radioactive waste that could be mixed with conventional explosives to form a “dirty bomb”. would spread the contamination over a wide area.

Anatolii Nosovskyi, director of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, said science The institute also has a separate laboratory in Chernobyl that contains even more dangerous materials.

These include “strong sources of gamma and neutron radiation” used to test equipment, Nosovskyi said, as well as highly radioactive material samples left over from the infamous Unit 4 meltdown in 1986.

Disturbingly, Nosovskyi said he did now contact lost with the laboratory and so “the fate of these sources is unknown to us”.

On the first day of the Russian invasion, February 24, troops poured across Ukraine’s border with Belarus, just 15km from Chernobyl, and ISPNPP managers were ordered to evacuate most of the staff.

Within two hours, 67 people had fled, while two from the village of Chernobyl stayed behind to keep an eye on the lab

ISPNPP scientist Maxim Saveliev said: “We have lost contact with these brave people.”

By 5 p.m., Russian troops had taken control of the Chernobyl facilities.

Shift supervisor Valentin Geiko reached an agreement whereby the plant’s Ukrainian guards would disarm and Russian troops would not interfere with civilian workers, Nosovskyi said.

But for nearly a month, workers were effectively held hostage as soldiers banned shift rotation and confiscated all cellphones.

According to Nosovskyi, in an act of defiance, the workers played Ukraine’s national anthem every morning and turned up the volume.

Earlier this week, however, soldiers allowed fresh personnel to come in, but some captured workers chose to remain so as not to “endanger people who were supposed to be taking their place.”

Nosovskyi described the attack on Chernobyl and other nuclear facilities in Ukraine as nothing more than state-sponsored “nuclear terrorism”.

It comes as…

• Ukrainian soldiers have recaptured one of the first cities to fall victim to the Russian invaders.
• Dramatic Call of Duty style footage shows the moment A Ukrainian soldier obliterates a Russian tank with a guided missile.
• Murdered Putin rival Boris Nemtsov was “shadowed” by an agent linked to the Kremlin’s hit squad. Suspect besieged Mariupol.
• Up to 40,000 Ukrainians have been caught forced out of besieged cities and into Russian forced labor in a war crime.
• Terrifying shots shows injured Russian soldiers looking terrified as they receive medals for bravery for their role in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
• Russia wants to split Ukraine in half like North and South Koreathe country’s military intelligence chief has warned.
• A blind mystic who is said to have predicted 9/11 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, claimed that Putin would “master the world”.
• have civilians in Kyiv resorted to drinking sewage while the city continues to be bombarded by terrible Russian rocket attacks.

Chernobyl workers also say that Russian soldiers who seized Chernobyl drove their armored vehicles without radiation shields through a highly toxic zone called the “Red Forest,” kicking up clouds of radioactive dust.

Two sources told Reuters that soldiers in the convoy were not using anti-radiation equipment.

The second Chernobyl worker said it was “suicidal” for the soldiers because the radioactive dust they inhaled would likely cause internal radiation in their bodies.

Both men said they saw Russian tanks and other armored vehicles moving through the Red Forest, which is the most radioactive part of the Chernobyl zone

Concerns were also raised about the forest fires that broke out on March 11, which were detonated in nearby radioactive forests harboring radioisotopes spewed out in the accident and picked up by plants and fungi.

According to Nosovskyi, the Russian military prevented firefighters from entering the exclusion zone.

The fires are still burning and could intensify as the weather warms, releasing radiation that could lead to a “significant deterioration in the radiation situation in Ukraine and across Europe.”

Measurements taken remotely show that radioactive particle concentrations in the smoke pose no health risk, he added, but an automated radiation monitoring system that went down during the power outage has not yet been brought back into service.

But Viktor Dolin, research director of the Institute of Environmental Geochemistry in Kyiv, warned: “There is no information about the actual situation in the exclusion zone.”

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