A Russian drone attack badly damaged the confinement structure around the disused Chernobyl nuclear power plant intended to prevent the release of nuclear substances, a senior nuclear industry official said Friday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the International Atomic Energy Agency had earlier reported that radiation levels remained normal at the plant, site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986.
"The barrier, which was supposed to prevent the spread of radioactive substances, has ceased to function according to its original design," Oleksandr Tytarchuk, the plant's chief engineer, told reporters at the stricken plant.
"However, to minimize the consequences that you can all see now, we will do everything possible in the near future."
Tytarchuk said the drone had pierced the outer cover of the containment vessel and exploded inside.
The containment vessel was completed in 2019 to cover the vast, and deteriorating, steel and concrete structure hurriedly erected after the April 1986 explosion in the plant's fourth reactor.
"The drone hit the outer cover, pierced it, fell into the system and exploded there," Tytarchuk said.
Had the explosion occurred 15-20 meters (50-65 feet) farther away, he said, "it would have directly hit the old shelter, which is 40 years old."
Emergency crews clambered over the roof of the structure, attending to a large gaping hole.
Andriy Danyk, head of Ukraine's Emergency Services, said personnel working at the site were being constantly rotated.
"We are ensuring that no one receives any radiation exposure," he said. "There are no excessive levels at the site."
Hryhory Ishchenko, head of the exclusion zone still in effect around the plant, said that by general agreement, drones are not shot down around nuclear sites.
The 1986 explosion at Chernobyl sent radiation spewing out across Europe and prompted Soviet authorities to mobilize vast numbers of men and equipment to deal with the aftermath of the accident. The plant's last working reactor was closed in 2000.
Russia occupied the plant and the surrounding area for more than a month in the first weeks of its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine as its forces initially tried to advance on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, accused Zelenskyy of orchestrating a drone attack to coincide with the Munich Security Conference as part of a lobbying effort to secure more weapons and money from the West.
Ukraine's SBU security service showed pictures of what it said was the drone, which it said had been carrying a high-explosive warhead.
It said the drone was a Geran-2, the Russian name for the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, and had been intended to hit the reactor enclosure.
Marcel Plichta, Fellow at the Center for Global Law and Governance at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, said the visuals released by Ukraine almost certainly showed a Shahed-136.
"The warhead of these drones is usually around 30 kilograms (66 pounds), which is notable because it means Russia can grab headlines by launching the attack, but probably wouldn't cause large amounts of damage like you would see from a traditional missile," he said.
"Russia frequently uses attacks like this to regain control of the narrative."
Zelenskyy told reporters in Munich that the drone had flown in below radar range, at a height of 85 meters.
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