Russian forces have destroyed a functioning laboratory at the derelict Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the Ukrainian state agency responsible for the exclusion zone said Tuesday. According to the agency, 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’.
The agency said ‘we hope it will harm itself and not the civilised world’. The destroyed lab was built in 2015 at a cost of six million euros with support from the European Commission.
Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory agency on Monday had said that the radiation monitors around the plant had stopped working. The Russian military had seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant at the beginning of the war.
