Russian forces have not only looted and destroyed a laboratory used to monitor nuclear waste at Chernobyl, but an undetonated rocket is now primed to explode at any minute in a Kharkiv nuclear facility, Ukrainian regulators said Wednesday.
The country’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate said personnel checking out the nuclear subcritical facility Neutron Source on Wednesday found an “object, preliminarily determined to be an unexploded MLRS 9K58 Smerch projectile,” which it warns creates “a potential danger of a new explosion in the immediate vicinity of a nuclear installation.”
While no damage was reported to parts of the facility that would immediately affect safety, regulators said it was impossible to disarm the rocket because of “constant battles in the area.”
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The facility has already repeatedly come under attack by Russian forces, the regulator said, and it came under shelling even as the inspection wrapped up.
“Please note that the [nuclear facility], like any other nuclear installation, is not designed for operation in combat conditions. The continuation of its bombing or shelling can lead to severe radiation consequences with contamination of nearby territories,” the agency warned.
If conditions at Chernobyl are anything to go by, however, Russian forces are unlikely to heed the regulator’s warnings.
Just a day before the discovery of the Smerch rocket, regulators said Russian troops who seized the power plant—the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986—had left it in shambles, with radiation monitors in the contaminated area around the plant no longer working and a crucial laboratory destroyed.
Perhaps more alarmingly, however, Ukrainian authorities said the laboratory that was looted contained “highly active samples and samples of radionuclides that are now in the hands of the enemy.”
