Chernobyl Workers Pick Up the Pieces After Russian Occupation
By Vivian Salama & Maksym Golubenko, June 6, 2022, WSJ

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine—When Aleksandr Barsukov and his colleagues
returned to work at the Chernobyl nuclear plant after the retreat
of Moscow’s forces, they found in every office what they described
as a parting gift from the Russian soldiers: a pile of human excrement.
For weeks, Russian forces occupied the plant, prompting many observers
to fear that fighting could lead to yet another disaster in this small
town some 20 miles from Ukraine’s northern border with Belarus.

Television monitors were ripped off walls, doors were broken and
equipment was destroyed. Tank tracks can be seen across the Chernobyl exclusion zone, as well as discarded green lunchboxes, which officials
say belonged to the Russian soldiers and are now likely radioactive.
“The poop was the icing on the cake,” joked Mr. Barsukov, the deputy director of the Chernobyl Ecocenter, which keeps samples of radioactive material collected from all over the world.

Employees at the plant, site of the worst nuclear-reactor disaster in
history, are now working to recover—and clean up—from the weeks of
Russian occupation, which they say left the place in shambles. And
while it could have been worse, the experience points to the acute
dangers nuclear plants in war zones face. “When the invasion started,
the front guards got a call to fall back because a huge flow of Russian
troops were coming,” said Julia Bezdizha, a spokeswoman for the plant. “They fled mainly because it was very dangerous to stay and engage in
heavy combat because of the heavy radiation.”

Valentina Borisovna, 83 years old, a sewing-factory employee who lives
in the local village, said Russian troops showed up at her door in
early March on the hunt for members of Right Sector, a far-right
Ukrainian nationalist organization. They didn’t find any, she said,
but they took food and some household valuables. “They told me they
went to one house and found a bunch of Right Sector materials,
swastikas, and other paraphernalia, but it was probably an excuse to
steal things,” Ms. Borisovna said.

Throughout the ordeal, a handful of workers involved in decommissioning activities remained on site even after Russian tanks rolled into the
facility from Belarus on Feb. 24. The plant was initially disconnected
from Ukraine’s power grid, sparking fear that it could disrupt the
cooling of on-site nuclear material & potentially lead to radiation leaks. After 5 days of using a backup generator for its electricity, Ukrainian engineers restored the main power, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, said in April that the occupation
of Chernobyl was “very, very dangerous,” adding that there were “some moments when the [radiation] levels have gone up because of the movement
of the heavy equipment that Russian forces were bringing here and when
they left.”

At first, a Russian military official brought in employees from Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear agency, and suggested that they oversee management
of the nuclear facility. “They didn’t know how,” Ms. Bezdizha said. “It requires special skills that they didn’t have.”

About 300 Ukrainian workers, ranging from engineers to guards, had been trapped at the facility when the invasion began. Many of them, working
around the clock with no breaks, kept the plant operating, even as heavy fighting took place in towns nearby. Weeks later, when Russian positions around Kyiv started to crumble and troops fell back, occupying forces at Chernobyl left. Ukrainian officials still worry, however, about Europe’s largest nuclear-power station, in the southeastern Ukrainian province of Zaporizhzhia, which has been the scene of heavy artillery fire since early March.

Ukrainian authorities said about 500 Russian soldiers have settled on
the site of the Zaporizhzhia plant with tanks, weapons and explosives—an arsenal that violates basic security protocols for a nuclear facility. Chernobyl at least avoided the worst-case scenario, but the aftermath
of the Russian occupation is still affecting those at the plant. The Ukrainian military had to lay a temporary crossing to replace a bridge
that retreating Russian forces destroyed, and many workers now face a
long commute. Before the war, many plant workers traveled from the
Ukrainian city of Chernihiv to Chernobyl by cutting through Belarus.
But that border is now closed since Belarus facilitated a staging ground
for Russian troops to invade Ukraine. “Now they have to do a huge circle and commute through Kyiv,” Ms. Bezdizha said. “Instead of a 30- to 40-minute
drive they have a two- to 2½-hour drive.”

Across the Chernobyl plant grounds remains evidence that the Russian
soldiers were poorly informed about the nature of their terrain.
Military trenches were dug into the ground, stirring up soil still contaminated from the 1986 accident. “They’re idiots,” said Barsukov, with a laugh. “Who digs ditches on the radioactive land? They didn’t
know what they were doing!”

Employees are working toward some semblance of normalcy, even as war
continues elsewhere in the country, and cleanup has begun in and
around the plant. Barsukov said the workers have returned to ruined
offices. Conference rooms were spray-painted, files were strewn across
all the offices and computer screens were smashed in. “Hard drives were taken out of all computers in all buildings,” he said, adding that the Russians also left behind 100 liters of high-quality vodka. “It could
have been a lot worse,” he said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chernobyl-workers-pick-up-the-pieces-after-russian-occupation-11654507800

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