A nuclear safety expert has warned that a monitoring lab in Chernobyl village has been raided, with thieves looting radioactive ingred...
A nuclear safety expert has warned that a monitoring lab in Chernobyl village has been raided, with thieves looting radioactive ingredients which could be mixed with explosives to create a 'dirty bomb' amid chaos brought about by Russia's invasion.
Anatolii Nosovskyi, director of director of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, said he has lost contact with the lab so the 'fate of these sources is unknown to us'.
He told Science that if such a bomb were to be made, created with the radioactive isotopes and radioactive waste pieces said to be taken, a wide area risks being contaminated.
The Kremlin's forces occupied the Chernobyl station (pictured in 2017) in the first days of the invasion last month
Mr Nosovskyi added that Putin's forces left firefighters unable to put out blazes in the exclusion zone, risking a 'significant deterioration of the radiation situation in Ukraine and throughout Europe'.
He said remote measurements don't suggest that the concentrations of radioactive particle in the smoke pose a health hazard, but added that an automated monitoring system which went down with the power outage on March 9 is still offline.
It comes as Lyudmila Denisova, commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada for human rights said there are 'more than 10,000 hectares of forests are burning in the exclusion zone in the CAEC area due to combat action', worsened by windy and dry weather.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk also accused Russia of 'irresponsible' acts around the occupied power station that could send radiation across much of Europe and called on the UN Security Council to take 'immediate measures'.
A nuclear safety expert has warned that a radiation monitoring lab Chernobyl village has been raided. Pictured, a Soviet-era over-the-horizon radar system in Chernobyl, in 2018
She said Putin's military 'pose a very serious threat not only to Ukraine, but also to hundreds of millions of Europeans' in a Facebook post, accusing Russia of using 'old and unconditional ammunition', creating a risk of damaging the containment vessel constructed around the station's wrecked fourth reactor.
Using old and badly maintained weapons increases detonation risk 'even when loading and transporting', Ms Vereshchuk added, claiming Russian troops carry the equipment through Pripyat, just under two miles away from the power plant.
She added: 'Further storage of hundreds of tons of ammunition is carried out next to the city of Chernobyl, which is also a short distance from the nuclear power plant.'
Mr Nosovskyi has called Russian troops' actions 'nuclear terrorism'
The Kremlin's forces occupied the Chernobyl station in the first days of the invasion last month and for a time prevented staff maintaining facilities there from leaving or being spelled off by other workers.
The mayor of Slavutych, the town created and built to house the plant's staff in the aftermath of the 1986 accident, said early on Monday that Russian forces that took over the town at the weekend had now left.
Soldiers during tactical drills for Ukrainian Interior Ministry units before the invasion last month, in Prypiat
Yuri Fomichev said in an online video post that the troops 'completed the work they had set out to do' and were gone. He originally said three people had been killed in clashes.
Fomichev was last week released from captivity after hundreds of residents, and families, staged a mass protest - despite stun grenades being thrown into the crowd.
He was briefly detained by Russian soldiers after they took control of the town, which is home to staff who work at the Chernobyl nuclear site.
'I have been released. Everything is fine, as far as it is possible under occupation,' the mayor said, after officials in the Ukraine capital Kyiv earlier announced he had been detained.
An agreement was reached that the Russians would leave if those with arms handed them over to the mayor with a dispensation for those with hunting rifles, according to the Guardian.
A projectile (the bright light, bottom left) landing in a car park at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, damaging cars in the area, earlier this month
Fire-damaged buildings at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear complex are pictured this month after coming under attack by Russian forces
Kyiv earlier stated that Vladimir Putin's troops had entered Slavutych and occupied the municipal hospital.
Last week concerns of a nuclear disaster were raised after Russian troops began shelling the town.
The bombing came just a few days after Ukrainian technicians who were being held by Russian forces to maintain the defunct nuclear plant for nearly four weeks without being rotated were finally able to go back to their homes in Slavutych.
Earlier this month Russian forces also shelled Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia.
Days later rockets were fires at Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, which contains nuclear material and a reactor.
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