The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that Russian troops have withdrawn from Chernobyl and officially handed back control of the site to Ukrainian staff. The IAEA director general and Ukrainian regulators had warned for several weeks that Russian military occupation had degraded the security and safety of the decommissioned nuclear plant.
Russian troops had withdrawn hastily because they had experienced radiation sickness from digging trenches in contaminated ground, the Ukrainian state energy company Energoatom has alleged.
In a press conference on 1 April immediately following trips to Ukraine and Russia to talk to regulators, IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said he had been given no explanation as to why troops left. But he described the withdrawal as “undoubtedly a step in the right direction” for safety.
The IAEA, in a statement, said that troops had, officially and in writing, transferred control of Chernobyl to Ukrainian personnel and moved some soldiers towards Belarus. Other soldiers had also left the city of Slavutych, where many scientists and staff working at Chernobyl live.
Since the first day of the invasion, the situation at Chernobyl has been tense as Russian troops seized the site. Owing to Russian tanks disturbing contaminated dust, scientific monitors detected a local increase in radiation levels- a problem that Grossi said may have been repeated as troops left.
Scientists who had been working at the site, since then, have been unable to access their laboratories and staff at the plant were held for several weeks without being able to rest or rotate shifts.
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2314502-ukraine-reclaims-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-as-russian-forces-withdraw/#ixzz7PHndpBrX
As an independent media platform, we do not take advertisements from governments and corporate houses. It is you, our readers, who have supported us on our journey to do honest and unbiased journalism. Please contribute, so that we can continue to do the same in future.
