How a cheap drone pierced the shield of 40,000 tons of chernobil

the construction of a gigantic protective shield For Chernobil damaged reactor, which would protect the world from radioactive rain after the worst nuclear disaster in history.

The steel housing, placed on the reactor No. 4 on railways in 2016, is the largest mobile structure in the world.

It has the height of a soccer field and weighs almost 40,000 tons.

More than 45 countries and organizations spent almost 1700 million dollars In its construction.

“We carry out an exhaustive security analysis, considering many possible consequences,” said Schmieman, 78, retired civil engineer from the state of Washington, who was the main technical advisor of the project.

“We consider earthquakes, tornadoes, strong winds, centenary snowfall, all kinds of factors. We do not consider war acts.”

On February 14, a drone with a high explosive power, whose production was probably 20,000 dollars, drilled the housing of steel

Ukrainian officials affirmed that Russians deliberately attacked The structure with a Shahed 136 drone.

The Kremlin has denied its responsibility.

While the initial fire was rapidly extinguished, a waterproof membrane within the isolation of the arc burned and burned slowly for almost three weeks, according to Artem Siryi, head of the structure’s department of operations, called a new safe confinement.

Emergency equipment, provided with mountaineering equipment, had to pierce the outer layer of the shield, seeking the fire, and spraying water inside a structure designed to stay dry and avoid corrosion, according to Ukrainian officials and international experts.

On March 7, Ukraine officially declared extinguished the fire.

However, by then, approximately half From the northern section of the shield it had been damaged, according to Ukrainian officials.

He International Atomic Energy Agency He declared on March 13 that fires and latent combustion had caused “extensive damage, including on the north side and, to a lesser extent, on the south side of his roof,” according to an evaluation that Ukraine shared with the body.

Radiation levels outside Chernobil are still normal, according to OIEA and Ukrainian nuclear regulators.

However, it is not clear how the shield will be repaired, how much it will cost or how long it will take.

Repairs may take years, nuclear experts warn.

This could delay the dismantling plan of the damaged reactor and the safe elimination of radioactive waste, which should begin in the next five years.

In addition, there is a risk that the steel housing begins to corroze, or that the temporary “sarcophagus” that Soviet engineers built around the reactor almost 40 years ago, and that it is still inside the housing, it deteriorates even more.

“The international community has invested so much money and time to build this structure because it knows the magnitude of the radiological threat inside,” said Shaun Burnie, a nuclear specialist at Greenpeace, who visited Chernobil’s damaged reactor after drone attack.

“It is a huge intellectual achievement to build something that could protect Europe, Ukraine and the world of what is inside,” he added.

“And now the Russians have practically opened a hole, both physically and metaphorically.”

On Thursday, Greenpeace published a report in which he claimed that the drone attack had seriously committed the plans for the damaged reactor and that the housing no longer worked as planned.

Jan Vande Putte, a nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Ukraine, said it may be necessary to remove, dismantle and replace the entire housing, an opinion shared by Schmieman and Siryi. The OIEA said that the confinement function of the housing had been compromised and that the structure needed “broad repairs.”

Both Russia and Ukraine have mutually attacked their Energy infrastructure From the large -scale invasion of Moscow in February 2022, but both have refrained from launching important attacks against nuclear centrals.

On Wednesday, as part of the negotiations on a possible fire, the president Donald Trump He suggested that the United States take over the Ukrainian electricity and nuclear power plants, arguing that this would help protect them.

The drones continue to florebil almost every night, Siryi declared in an interview.

“The noise of its engines has become a familiar sound,” he added. Many were probably heading to kyiv, the capital of the country.

For people of a certain age, Chernobil’s explosion in 1986, after years of growing fear of nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States, was a nightmare.

He deployed a column of radioactive air in the air, caused a public health emergency throughout Europe and led many to question nuclear energy.

The Soviets, which initially hid the magnitude of the disasterthey hurriedly built the “concrete and steel emergency sarcophagus to enclose the damaged reactor.

The authorities also established an “exclusion zone” of 2,600 square kilometers where no one was allowed to live.

The official figure of dead for the explosion was 31.

But many other people became ill or finally died.

Cancer rates, especially thyroid, increased in areas very exposed to radiation.

The sarcophagus, increasingly unstable, was not intended to last. Discover how to replace it took decades.

Chernobil’s confinement structure, in which Schmieman worked, was a feat of engineering and construction, designed to protect the damaged reactor for 100 years.

To minimize radiation exposurethe structure was built at approximately 800 meters from the damaged reactor and then moved to its place.

It is about 12 meters thick, with an outer and another steel inside housing.

The level of humidity between housings is maintained below 40 % to prevent corrosion.

The exterior housing is key to avoiding rainfall, Schmieman explained.

The interior housing is designed to keep the radioactive dust inside the structure, especially when the cranes already installed begin to disassemble the sarcophagus and the damaged reactor before discarding the waste safely in smaller containers.

By the end of this year, specialists planned to finish the initial plan describing the first stage of dismantling.

“Unfortunately, that is no longer possible” due to drone attack, Siryi said.

He added that experts were evaluating how to repair the frame, and even if possible.

Workers would have to close the Initial Hole of 50 square meters caused by drone.

But they would also have to seal the small holes created by the workers who tried to extinguish the fire.

They would have to somehow repair damaged membrane and insulation, as well as any damaged internal structure.

And they would have to reduce the moisture resulting from hundreds of workers with high power hoses within the structure.

Doing that where the confinement frame is probably not possible, experts said, because workers would be exposed to high levels of radiation from the inside.

Moving the structure and then repairing it would also be a challenge.

What would the sarcophagus protect, already unstable, while these works were carried out?

“The complete restoration of the facilities is practically impossible”Sumii said.

“Returning it as close as possible to its original state, well, that would probably require hundreds of millions of dollars.” Schmieman said that repairing the structure or building a new one would be extremely expensive.

He suggested temporarily covering the holes – with something similar to adhesive tape – so that the interior ventilation system could begin to reduce moisture.

“Do not immediately seek a quick and permanent solution for the large number of holes in the building, but a quick way to reduce corrosion,” he said.

One thing that could help, he added, are drones.

Due to war, Ukraine has developed drone technology faster than almost any other country.

Small drones – many smaller than Shahed 136 that pierced the structure – could perhaps evaluate damage inside the frame and even help repair them.