Ukraine: IAEA Probes Claim That Russians Left Chernobyl Due to Radiation Illness

The UN's atomic watchdog said it will send an 'assistance and support mission' to Chernobyl in the next few days.

Ukraine's power company claimed that Russian soldiers dug trenches in the forest within the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and were exposed to radiation.

(Photo: The Quint)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Friday, 1 April, that it has started a probe into Ukrainian claims that Russian troops left the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, after being exposed to high doses of radiation.

The UN atomic energy body added that it cannot validate the claims made by Ukraine’s power company Energoatom and has sought an independent evaluation, reported The Guardian.

The power company alleged that Russian soldiers dug trenches in the forest within the exclusion zone and "panicked at the first sign of illness" and fled.

Energoatom also claimed that Russian soldiers have retreated from the nearby town of Slavutych, where workers at Chernobyl reside.

Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, also joined in the claims that Russian troops who dug trenches in the forest within the exclusion zone were exposed to radiation kicked up by tanks driving through the zone, but it has not been independently verified.

The IAEA said that it will send its first "assistance and support mission" to Chernobyl in the next few days.

Experts Says Radiation Sickness 'Unlikely'

However, Jeremy Gordon, the CEO at UK consultancy firm Fluent in Energy, has argued that it is unlikely that Russian soldiers developed 'Acute Radiation Syndrome' in the exclusion zone of the nuclear plant.

He explained that any remnants of radiation from the 1986 disaster would be long gone by now as the most intense radiation from a nuclear material decays within hours.

Gordon tweeted on Thursday,

“Radiation sources literally signal their presence and so are easy to find. It is unlikely that a hotspot presenting this level of danger would not have been identified and cleared up.”

He added that intense radiation would also only affect troops who came in direct contact with a nuclear source or sat next to the nuclear material, and not "seven bus loads of them".

However, he clarified that the soil in the exclusive zone remains contaminated and if the soldiers burned wood from the forest, they would inhale the contamination from the smoke and be at a higher risk of cancer.

In spite of this scenario, it would still not be strong enough for Acute Radiation Syndrome and would not make the soldiers physically sick.

(With inputs from The Guardian.)