Ukrainian engineers and construction workers are carrying out temporary repairs of the Chornobyl NPP site’s New Safe Confinement (NSC) that was severely damaged in a drone attack in February, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said. The drone strike pierced a big hole through the roof of the large confinement structure built to prevent any radioactive release from the reactor destroyed in the 1986 accident and protect it from external hazards. It took several weeks to completely extinguish the fires and smouldering caused by this strike.
The IAEA team based at the Chornobyl plant in visited the NSC in recent days to discuss ongoing efforts by the site to assess the building’s structural integrity and to observe repairs of the inner and outer cladding to prevent water ingress.
“Immediately after the drone strike Ukrainian emergency personnel rushed to contain and eventually put out the fires. The site is now focusing its efforts on assessing the full extent of the damage while also carrying out short-term repairs. It is clear that the confinement structure – constructed at huge expense and with major international support – suffered extensive damage,” Grossi noted. However, he reiterated that there has not been any radioactive release as a result of the damage, and that the NSC is able to continue to perform its protective function.
UIN March, representatives of the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) visited the site to conduct a detailed inspection of the damage. The impact caused a 15-square-metre hole in the external cladding of the arch and further damage to an area of about 200-square-metres, as well as to some joints and bolts.
The visit followed an extraordinary EBRD Assembly meeting, jointly with the Ministry of Environment of Ukraine and the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management. The meeting approved an allocation of €400,000 for specialist-led damage assessment in order to initiate the restoration process of the NSC.
The NSC was completed in 2019 to cover the sarcophagus (shelter) that was hastily erected in the immediate aftermath of the 1986 accident to protect the destroyed reactor. It was intended to protect the shelter from rain and meltwater, and to provide a space to carry out its partial dismantling. The NSC was financed by the Chernobyl Shelter Fund administered by EBRD. It received €1.6bn ($1.7bn) from 45 donor countries and EBRD provided €480m of its own resources.
