By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press
Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry, in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those working to create a nuclear free world.
On February 26 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that “Russian forces have taken control of” the Chernobyl nuclear plant site of the 1986 nuclear catastrophe, when the now former Soviet Union owned and operated the facility.
On February 25 the Ukranian nuclear regulatory agency informed the IAEA of “elevated levels of radiation” at the site. The IAEA said this was “possibly from heavy military vehicles churning up contaminated soil,” but asserted “the radiation levels did not pose any threat to the public.”
The agency further claimed it had received “no further radiation data from the Exclusion Zone (Chernobyl.)”
But this raises further questions.
Why is the site still contaminated 30 some years after the catastrophe? If hostile forces are in control, why would they provide any “further radiation data” anyway?
Beyond Nuclear is a US organization “Working for a world free from nuclear power and nuclear weapons.”
In a recent report it reported that Ukraine has four nuclear plants comprising 15 reactors. One of these plants has six reactors. It is the largest electrical plant in Europe. No US nuke plant has more than three reactors. Nuclear power provides about half of Ukraine’s electricity.
With weapons of mass destruction proliferating in Ukraine, all these facilities are now sitting ducks waiting for a possible catastrophic mishap, intended or not to drop. The world must act before it’s too late–for all of us.
Sources: International Atomic Energy Agency.iaca.org; Beyond Nuclear .beyond nuclear.org.
Michael Steinberg is a veteran activist and journalist. His father’s family came to this country from Ukraine.
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Wednesday report: Nuclear plant workers block access to Russian forces
Hundreds of workers and local people have blocked an access road to a Ukrainian nuclear power plant near the southeastern town of Enerhodar, as Russian forces advance in the area.
Videos posted to the Facebook page of the local authority showed a large crowd carrying Ukrainian flags blocking the road Wednesday morning.
Garbage trucks were also being used to block the thoroughfare.
Dmytro Orlov, mayor of Enerhodar, said on his Facebook page: “We conveyed the position of our city and its residents that the ZNPP [Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant] is under reliable protection, that its workers and residents of Enerhodar are under Ukrainian flags.”
“All municipal services are working in emergency mode. Nobody is going to surrender the city. People are determined,” Orlov added.
Russia informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that its military forces have taken control of the territory around the Zaporizhzhia plant, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Tuesday.