Chernobyl Nuclear Plant’s Lab Destroyed By Russian Forces, Says Ukraine

Kyiv: Russian forces have destroyed a functioning laboratory at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine has claimed.

The lab built, in 2015 with European Commission’s support, was set up at a cost of 6 million euros.

The Ukrainian state agency responsible for the exclusion zone said that the lab contained ‘highly active samples of radionuclides (unstable atoms of chemical elements that release radiation) that are now in the hands of the enemy’.

“We hope it will harm itself and not the civilised world,” the agency said.

Two days ago, Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom said that the radiation monitors around the plant had stopped working.

Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Vladimir Putin’s military seized the derelict Chernobyl nuclear power plant.