Dirty bomb ingredients ‘go missing’ from Chernobyl after Russian troops take over nuke site

the institute also has a separate lab in Chernobyl which contains even more dangerous materials.

These include “powerful sources of gamma and neutron radiation” used to test devices, Nosovskyi said, as well as intensely radioactive samples of material leftover from the infamous Unit Four meltdown in 1986.

Worryingly, Nosovskyi said he has now lost contact with the lab and so “the fate of these sources is unknown to us.”

On the first day of the Russian invasion, February 24, troops poured across Ukraine’s border with Belarus, just 15km from Chernobyl and ISPNPP managers were ordered to evacuate most staff.

Within two hours, 67 people had cleared out while two who live in Chernobyl village remained to keep an eye on the lab

ISPNPP senior scientist Maxim Saveliev said: “We’ve lost contact with these brave people.”

By 5pm, Russian troops had gained control over the facilities at Chernobyl.

A deal was struck by shift supervisor Valentin Geiko where the plant’s Ukrainian guards would disarm and the Russian troops would not interfere with the civilian workers, Nosovskyi said.

But for nearly a month, workers were effectively held hostage as soldiers forbade a shift change and confiscated any mobile phones.

Workers, in an act of defiance, played Ukraine’s national anthem every morning and cranked up the volume., according to Nosovskyi.

Earlier this week though, the soldiers allowed fresh staff to rotate in but some captive workers chose to stay in order “not to put at risk people who should come in their place”.

Nosovskyi labelled the assault on Chernobyl, as well as other nuclear installations in Ukraine, as nothing short of state-sponsored “nuclear terrorism”.

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It comes as...

• Ukrainian soldiers have recaptured one of the first towns to fall to Russian invaders.
• Dramatic Call Of Duty-style footage shows the moment a Ukrainian soldier obliterates a Russian tank using a guided missile.
• Murdered Putin rival Boris Nemtsov ‘was tailed’ by an agent linked to Kremlin hit squad as suspect lays siege to Mariupol.
• Up to 40,000 Ukrainians have been snatched from besieged cities and forced into Russian slave labour in a war crime.
• Chilling footage shows injured Russian soldiers looking terrified as they are awarded bravery medals for their role in Putin's Ukraine invasion.
• Russia wants to split Ukraine in half like North and South Korea, the country's military intelligence chief has warned.
• A blind mystic who is said to have predicted 9/11 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine claimed Putin will become "lord of the world".
• Civilians in Kyiv have resorted to drinking sewage water as the city continues to be bombarded by horror Russian missile strikes.

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Workers at Chernobyl also say Russian soldiers who seized Chernobyl drove their armoured vehicles without radiation protection through a highly toxic zone called the "Red Forest", kicking up clouds of radioactive dust.

Two sources told Reuters soldiers in the convoy did not use any anti-radiation gear.

The second Chernobyl employee said that was "suicidal" for the soldiers because the radioactive dust they inhaled was likely to cause internal radiation in their bodies.

Both men said they had witnessed Russian tanks and other armoured vehicles moving through the Red Forest, which is the most radioactively contaminated part of the zone around Chernobyl

Concerns have also been raised about the wildfires that erupted on March 11, which were ignited in the nearby radioactive forests, which harbour radioisotopes that were disgorged in the accident and taken up by plants and fungi.

The Russian military have prevented firefighters from entering the exclusion zone, according to Nosovskyi.

The fires are still burning and could grow more intense as the weather warms and release radiation that could lead to “significant deterioration of the radiation situation in Ukraine and throughout Europe.”

Measurements taken remotely indicate radioactive particle concentrations in the smoke do not pose a health hazard, he added, but an automated radiation monitoring system that went down in the power outage has not yet been brought back online.

But Viktor Dolin, research director of the Institute for Environmental Geochemistry in Kyiv, warned: “There is no information on the real situation in the exclusion zone."