Russia and Ukraine Blame Each Other for Radiation Risk at Chernobyl

(Bloomberg) -- Ukraine and Russia accused each other of raising radiation-exposure risks at the defunct nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 meltdown from which Kremlin troops are currently withdrawing.

Russians who began leaving the Chernobyl nuclear plant got “significant doses” of radiation from digging trenches at the highly contaminated site, Ukraine's state power company said Friday. Moscow's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Thursday that Ukraine workers at the site have sabotaged transmission lines used to monitor radiation safety.

Neither account could be independently verified by IAEA monitors. The agency's Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi returns to Vienna on Friday after consultations with senior nuclear officials in Ukraine and Russia. The Argentine diplomat will give a press briefing at 2:30 p.m. Vienna time.

The 2,600 square kilometer (1,000 mile) Chernobyl exclusion zone contains long-lived radioactive material that will take thousands of years to decay. It also houses a nuclear-waste facility, where spent fuel from Ukraine's reactors is encased for safe, long-term storage.

There are Bigger Atomic Worries Than Chernobyl in Ukraine

Nuclear authorities have been warning for weeks that the relative risks at Chernobyl are low -- compared to the dangers of bullets, bombs and the threats to functioning nuclear power plants -- but that the site of the deadly accident continues to stoke a visceral reaction among people. Russia's retreat from the site provides new ammunition in the information war that's run parallel to the armed conflict now in its second month.

The more immediate radiation concerns in Ukraine are located at the country's 15 other reactors which are operating in a warzone. Vadim Chumak, head of the external exposure dosimetry lab at Ukraine's National Research Center for Radiation Medicine, told MIT Technology Review this week that he's more concerned by the risk posed by Russia's occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the southeast of the country.

“In Zaporizhzhia they have six reactors, plus spent fuel storage,” he said. “If there was any damage to the spent fuel assemblies stored at Zaporizhzhia, it could result in an enormous radiological emergency, comparable to what happened in Chernobyl.”