Old Video Shared as Nuclear Power Plant Explosion After Earthquake in Turkey

The 2020 video showed an explosion that took place at the Port of Beirut in Lebanon.

A video showing a huge smoke cloud emanating from a building has gone viral following the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria on Monday and Tuesday, 6-7 February. A swarm of tremors have claimed over 5,000 lives, as per the latest available date.

The claim: People sharing the video said that it shows a nuclear plant in Turkey going up in smoke following the earthquake. "Nuclear plant explode due to #Earthquake in #Turkey," read one caption.

(Archives of more such posts can be found here and here.)

The truth: The video showed an explosion that took place at the Port of Beirut, Lebanon on 4 August 2020. Over 200 people were killed in the explosion and thousands others were injured.

How did we find that out: We used the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension to extract keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search on some of them.

• The search results led us to videos showing the explosion that took place in Beirut in August 2020.

• We found the viral video published on British news publication Sky News' official YouTube channel.

• A report published in The Quint mentioned that a fire in an area storing 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in the Beirut port warehouse caused two blasts in Beirut.

• Buildings as far as 10 km away were damaged and explosions were heard 240 km in the island country of Cyprus.

What about nuclear plant in Turkey:

• Turkey's Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, which is under construction, was not damaged by the earthquakes that hit the country, the Russian company building the plant Rosatom, told Reuters.

• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also said that the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant had not been impacted by the earthquake and the safety of radioactive sources had been ensured.

As of now, no impact from earthquakes on nuclear safety & security in Türkiye, its Nuclear Regulatory Authority told IAEA; no issues so far related to radiological safety & security of radioactive sources, & the country's under construction nuclear power plant is unaffected.

— IAEA - International Atomic Energy Agency ⚛️ (@iaeaorg) February 6, 2023

Conclusion: An old video of an explosion in Lebanon has gone viral as a blast at a nuclear power plant in Turkey after the recent earthquakes.

The Quint's WebQoof team has debunked several such old and unrelated videos that have been shared following the devastating earthquakes. You can read our stories here, here and here.

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