Cork-based charity expresses alarm following damage to Chernobyl nuclear power plant

Founder of the Cork-based Chernobyl Children International charity, Adi Roche has expressed alarm following reports that a Russian drone struck the protective confinement shell of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Ms Roche has warned that any potential explosion or meltdown at Chernobyl “by accident or design” would cause “irreversible damage to the environment and human life that will last for thousands of years”.

It comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that a Russian drone with a high-explosive warhead hit the protective confinement shell of the nuclear power plant in the Kyiv region last night. 

Radiation levels have not increased, Mr Zelensky and the UN atomic agency said.

The drone strike damaged the structure and started a fire – which has been put out, Mr Zelensky added.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later denied the claims and suggested Ukrainian officials made the claim about the strike because they wanted to thwart efforts to end the war through negotiations, after US President Donald Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin about reaching a peace deal.

Speaking following the incident, Ms Roche said her “worst nightmare” in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war “is that the tragedy of the Chernobyl disaster could be re-released on the world”.

“I fear that this area, a sacred area, an area of utter vulnerability and danger, a special area of human tragedy, could once again, have deadly radioactive contamination released which would spread everywhere, like a great and uncontrollable monster,” she said.

Nuclear stations, she said, must remain globally “‘off’ limits because of their lethal potential to destroy the planet”.

The confinement shell of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is a protective cover built around the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl plant, which exploded in 1986, causing one of the worst nuclear accidents in nuclear history.

Mr Zelensky claimed on Telegram that the Chernobyl strike showed that “Putin is certainly not preparing for negotiations [to end the war]”.