The level of radioactivity at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine is “abnormal”, said Tuesday the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, visiting the site, exactly 36 years after the worst disaster in the history of civilian nuclear energy.
“The level of radioactivity is, I would say, abnormal,” Grossi told reporters on the site, without giving specific numbers. “Levels (of radioactivity) increased at times when the Russians brought heavy equipment into the area and when they left,” he added, noting that the IAEA was monitoring the situation “daily”.
A little earlier, the head of the IAEA had deemed “absolutely abnormal” and “very, very dangerous” the occupation of the Chernobyl site by the Russian army, which began at the start of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine on February 24 and ended on March 31.
Mr. Grossi is accompanied on site by a team of experts “to deliver vital equipment” (dosimeters, protective suits, etc.), to carry out “radiological and other checks”.
These experts must “repair the remote monitoring systems, which stopped transmitting data to the headquarters” of the IAEA in Vienna (Austria) shortly after the start of the war, he said.
Located 150 kilometers north of kyiv, on the Belarusian border, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had, from the start of its occupation by the Russians, been the victim of a cut in electricity and communications networks.
Rafael Grossi had already traveled to Ukraine at the end of March to lay the foundations for an agreement to provide technical assistance. He had visited the southern power station of Yuzhno-Ukrainsk, before meeting senior Russian officials in Kaliningrad on the shores of the Baltic.
Ukraine has 15 reactors in four operating plants, in addition to waste repositories such as the Chernobyl plant. The largest power plant is the one located in Energodar, near the city of Zaporijjia, hit on Tuesday by two Russian missile attacks, according to the Ukrainians.
A Chernobyl reactor exploded in 1986 contaminating much of Europe but especially Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. Having become an “exclusion zone”, the territory within a radius of 30 kilometers around the plant is still heavily contaminated and it is forbidden to live there permanently.