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Chornobyl satellite town under siege
The State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone management is reporting that the Chornobyl nuclear power plant satellite city of Slavutych is under attack. “Right now the enemy is trying to take the city of Slavutych by storm. Blockbuster shelling is underway,” says the agency’s Facebook page. Checkpoints are under heavy artillery fire. The State…
Read MoreChornobyl laboratory attacked?
A laboratory on the Chornobyl nuclear site that researches radioactive waste management has been “robbed and destroyed” by the occupying Russian military forces, according to the State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management. (Державне агентство України з управління зоною відчуження) The lab was created in 2015 in collaboration with the European Union and at…
Read MoreRepublicans offer Russian uranium ban
Pivot to increase mining on domestic and Indigenous land In response to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s February 24th invasion of sovereign Ukraine, the Biden administration quickly martialed global economic sanctions against Russian aggression by targeting its oil, coal and liquified gas imports. But at the behest of the US nuclear industry lobby, the Nuclear Energy…
Read MoreThe Chernobyl tinder box: War increases fire risks
Forest fires have again erupted around the defunct and radioactively-contaminated Chernobyl nuclear power facility. Fires reloft and redistribute radionuclides trapped in soil and the forest litter, which is taking much longer to decay than it should, providing further fuel for fires. When one reactor core of the 4-reactor Chernobyl complex melted down and exploded in…
Read MoreChornobyl shift change, but some don’t leave
Some Chornobyl workers at the nuclear plant now occupied by Russian forces have finally been allowed to go off shift, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, but other staff apparently refused to leave. After working for almost one month straight, since the February 24 occupation by Russian military began, “a partial rotation of operational…
Read MoreCruise missiles hit Rivne
Russia’s defense ministry has said it hit a Ukrainian military installation in the northwestern city of Rivne with cruise missiles on Monday, raising fears for the safety and security of Rivne’s four-reactor nuclear power plant, the second largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine and the biggest power station of any kind in western Ukraine. As…
Read MoreThe current situation at Zaporizhzhia
While the situation at Chornobyl remains precarious, given the absence of shift changes and the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine’s (SNRIU) total loss of contact with the staff there, the situation at Zaporizhzhia seems a little more transparent, although fraught with risk. As the SNRIU points out, the presence of ROSATOM personnel there is…
Read MoreThe current situation at Chornobyl
March 16 update from The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine The SNRIU continues informing on the state of the Chornobyl NPP. Until now, all Chornobyl NPP facilities, and facilities located in the Exclusion Zone are under the control of the aggressor country’s military. At present, the regulatory control over the state of nuclear and…
Read MoreAttack on Zaporizhzhia was far closer to disaster
A video analysis of unfolding events at the Zaporizhzhia reactors in Ukraine show disaster was much closer than had been originally reported. NPR reviewed over four hours of video footage along with photographs, which revealed Russian troops repeatedly fired heavy weapons in the direction of the massive reactor buildings, shredding the administrative building. A shell…
Read MoreNuclear power in the crosshairs of war
Ecoaction, an environmental NGO in Ukraine, and the European Chernobyl Foundation, hosted a briefing Thursday, March 10, updating the nuclear status of Ukraine — highlighting physical safety problems, and grave staffing concerns these facilities. Experts raised the dangers caused by mistreatment of staff such as lack of food, rest, and heat, inability to obtain needed…
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