The Ukrainian flag has been raised over the Chernobyl nuclear plant after Russian forces completely withdrew, Ukraine’s state nuclear agency said on Saturday.
“Today, April 2, at 11:00, Ukrainian flag was raised over the Chernobyl NPP and the anthem was sung,” Energoatom said in a Telegram statement.
This comes after the agency announced on Thursday that Russian forces were beginning to withdraw from the plant after suffering “significant doses of radiation.”
Grunts always get to be guinea pigs for official politics.
Eideard 
“Haunting scenes of the death, destruction and sickness that followed the Chernobyl meltdown 36 years ago — the deadliest nuclear accident of all time — were recorded on film and video but remained hidden for decades. Now, these previously unknown stories are finally coming to light, in a new HBO documentary, “Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes.” https://www.livescience.com/chernobyl-lost-tapes-hbo-trailer
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kxUOKqSxNs
Had planned this for 7AM; then, got the Nevada test site article in email. Figured I’d do that first. Chernobyl a couple hours later.
Now scheduled for 9AM MDT
Ukraine is holding talks with Russian invaders on the exchange of 169 National Guard servicemen who were taken prisoner at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. (April 14, 2022) https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3456930-ukraine-in-talks-on-exchange-of-169-national-guard-soldiers-who-were-taken-prisoner-at-chornobyl-plant-interior-minister.html
Russian soldiers who captured the Chernobyl nuclear site in the early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February may have taken home radioactive “souvenirs.”
Ukraine’s state nuclear company posted notice on Facebook over the weekend that Russian troops appear to have absconded with materials saturated with the equivalent of “700 kg of radioactive waste with the presence of beta and gamma radiation.” https://warisboring.com/russian-soldiers-taking-radioactive-souvenirs-from-chernobyl/
To date, the preliminary damage inflicted by the Russian invaders on the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone reportedly exceeds UAH 2.5 billion. https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3487062-russian-troops-inflict-over-25m-damage-on-chornobyl-zone.html [1 USD = 29.5614 Ukrainian Hryvnia]
Russian Missiles Strike Solar Power Plant in Ukraine https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjbga5/russian-missiles-strike-solar-power-plant-in-ukraine
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — Six hundred ninety-eight computers. 344 vehicles. 1,500 radiation dosimeters. Irreplaceable software. Almost every piece of firefighting equipment.
The list of what Russia’s occupying forces stole, blew up or riddled with bullets in and around Chernobyl’s laboratories is still being compiled. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/02/ukraine-chernobyl-damage-done-by-russians/
“Ukraine to build nine nuclear power units with Westinghouse” https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-economy/3498863-ukraine-to-build-nine-nuclear-power-units-with-westinghouse.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000
“The AP1000 is a nuclear power plant designed and sold by Westinghouse Electric Company. The plant is a pressurized water reactor with improved use of passive nuclear safety and many design features intended to lower its capital cost and improve its economics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000
As of July 2021, China is the sole operator of this reactor design and currently developing more advanced versions and owns their patent rights. The first AP1000 began operations in China at Sanmen, where Unit 1 became the first AP1000 to achieve criticality in June 2018 and was connected to the grid the next month. Further builds in China will be based on the modified CAP1400 design. See https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Large-scale-Chinese-reactor-design-officially-laun
“…The restoration of electricity averted the nightmare of a hydrogen explosion in the spent fuel repository, where 8500 tons of uranium fuel rods continue to cool off in pools of water. The repository poses a major radioactive threat: Through radioactive decay, the assemblies have accumulated about 240 times more cesium-137 and 1500 times more strontium-90 than the destroyed reactor spewed in 1986, Dolin [Viktor Dolin, research director of the Institute for Environmental Geochemistry in Kyiv] says. Staff intend to punch holes in the repository’s walls to allow hydrogen gas to escape in the event of a future power outage, Nosovskyi [ director of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv] says.
The other big menace at Chernobyl are the fuel-containing masses (FCMs)—fuel rods, zirconium cladding, and other materials that melted into radioactive conglomerations during the accident and continue to smolder under Unit Four’s sarcophagus, hastily erected in the wake of the disaster. For years Ukrainian scientists, with Russian colleagues from the Kurchatov institute, have kept a tense vigil. (The institute severed ties with its Ukrainian partners in a statement earlier this month supporting the war and the “denazification” of Ukraine.) Occasional spikes in the number of neutrons streaming from certain FCMs—a sign of fission—prompt sprinkler systems to spray gadolinium nitrate solution, which absorbs neutrons.”
Science. March 25, 2022: “Dirty bomb ingredients go missing from Chernobyl monitoring lab” https://www.science.org/content/article/dirty-bomb-ingredients-go-missing-chornobyl-monitoring-lab