Chernobyl New Safe Confinement structure struck by drone… what now?

[Flyboy]

Last night, a suspected Russian one-way drone with an explosive warhead impacted the New Safe Confinement shelter over the ruins of Chernobyl’s #4 reactor.

The explosion caused damage to at least the outer shell, with an unclear amount of damage to the interior of the facility.

Officials report no damage to the Sarcophagus within or any radioactive material having been released, and they are monitoring the situation closely.

There is concern about the long-term implications to the health of the NSC following this, as this was never something that was expected. Nor, as far as I understand, was there ever any plans for having to make repairs this extensive.

There’s a lot of unknowns right now, and lots of fingers being pointed by both Ukraine and Russia. Let’s keep the finger pointing between them, leave the politics elsewhere, and just look at the engineering and technology angle of how they’re going to respond to this unexpected (and deeply unwelcome) incident.

 

[berkeman]

There’s a lot of unknowns right now, and lots of fingers being pointed by both Ukraine and Russia. Let’s keep the finger pointing between them, leave the politics elsewhere, and just look at the engineering and technology angle of how they’re going to respond to this unexpected (and deeply unwelcome) incident.

Yes, agreed. This can be a valuable thread for discussing nuclear facility protection structures in real-life scenarios, but per the PF rules we need to keep political considerations out of this thread. Thanks folks.