Drone attack that Ukraine blamed on Russia blew hole in painstakingly erected €1.5bn shield meant to allow for final clean-up of 1986 meltdown site

Drone attack that Ukraine blamed on Russia blew hole in painstakingly erected €1.5bn shield meant to allow for final clean-up of 1986 meltdown site

The protective shield over the Chornobyl disaster nuclear reactor in Ukraine, which was hit by a drone in February, can no longer perform its main function of blocking radiation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has announced.

In February a drone strike blew a hole in the “new safe confinement”, which was painstakingly built at a cost of €1.5bn ($1.75bn) next to the destroyed reactor and then hauled into place on tracks, with the work completed in 2019 by a Europe-led initiative. The IAEA said an inspection last week of the steel confinement structure found the drone impact had degraded the structure.

The 1986 Chornobyl explosion – which happened when Ukraine was under Moscow’s rule as part of the Soviet Union – sent radiation across Europe. In the scramble to contain the meltdown, the Soviets built over the reactor a concrete “sarcophagus” with only a 30-year lifespan. The new confinement was built to contain radiation during the decades-long final removal of the sarcophagus, ruined reactor building underneath it and the melted-down nuclear fuel itself.

    • silasmariner@programming.devEnglish
      131·
      3 months ago

      I think it’s probably just framed that way because Russia never officially took responsibility for it, not because anyone believes Ukraine really did it

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.todayEnglish
      9·
      3 months ago

      detonate a dirty bomb on their own soil for… checks notes international sympathy?

      I suppose at face value I was thinking maybe more like

      “Shit, missed.”

      “Whoops!”

      “Those damn Russians!!!”

      But yeah sounds like a bit of BS because Russia simply didn’t admit to it.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      3 months ago

      Like it or not, that’s journalism 101. You don’t make claims unless you can directly verify them, even if they seem obvious.

      And if you do, you attribute to who said it. Like the UN or IAEA.

      Guardian should have just omitted that blurb from the byline, TBH.

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          Every news site is biased. Read them with that mind.

          As an example, one of my usual sources since like 2015 is Axios. Their site is clean, lean, and they are extremely well sourced in Washington. But they recently got a big cash infusion from OpenAI. And, surprise surprise, they post a small but steady stream of Tech Bro evangelism on the side now.

          RT is generally awful, but sometimes their reporting outside of Russia, where they have incentive to dig, can be good.

          Hence, my bucket for Guardian is “high class liberal catnip .” They are clickbaity. That’s they trend so much here on Lemmy.

          They’re well sourced. Their integrity is leagues beyond, say, rawstory or dailybeast that get spammed on Lemmy. So you have to filter their stories with that in mind.

          And this is pretty much what ALL written news is doing to survive, if they can. Because their competition on YouTube/Facebook/whatever is not bound to the same standards they are.

          If they don’t, they die.

          I used to write small articles for a tech hardware site. The owner chose to take the site down rather than chase the clickbait game.

    • ohulancutash@feddit.ukEnglish
      75·
      3 months ago

      So your problem is that it has too much journalistic integrity? It is a contested event, which extensive investigation has failed to conclusively attribute. So they must fall back on whichever claim they believe to be most credible. It’s not a points scoring exercise.

      And yes, shit happens in a war. Ukraine managed to accidentally rocket strike Poland, they are quite capable of accidentally hitting Chornobyl. It isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

    • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyzEnglish
      27·
      3 months ago

      Was the plant in Russian occupied territory at the time? If so, it was probably Ukraine. Did Ukraine hold the territory at the time? Then it was probably Russia.

        • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyzEnglish
          31·
          3 months ago

          The alternative, that either Russia or Ukraine would intentionally bomb a nuclear containment site in territory it plans to control indefinitely, is much flimsier.

            • Alcoholicorn@mander.xyzEnglish
              3·
              3 months ago

              they’re not going to ruin vast swaths of their own land for the next century after the fight with Russia fizzles out, as most people know will happen at this rate.

              They’re losing territory every day, if Chernobyl is Russian territory when the war fizzles out, it’s likely to remain that way for quite some time.

              Meanwhile Russia’s only long-term plans for Ukraine is oil, gas and minerals. They don’t need the land, they want to hurt as many citizens as possible, get to the goods and carve out territory to restore pipelines

              All of these objectives made more difficult if you have a nuclear containment issue inside that territory. If you control the territory, you have no reason to use a drone to irradiate territory you need to move troops and supplies through.

              I’m not saying that Russia didn’t do it, idk if they held the territory at the time, but to suggest Russia somehow benefits from irradiating itself is just silly. This isn’t even the first time we’ve seen this, see the dam, pipeline, and bridge in Russian-held territory that people tried to blame on Russia for borderline conspiratorial reasons.