KYIV — A Russian attack drone struck the massive sarcophagus protecting the destroyed Chernobyl nuclear reactor, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement Friday.
The 108-meter-high arched steel structure covered the reactor in 2016 to halt nuclear contamination from the 1986 nuclear meltdown near Pripyat in northern Ukraine, which caused a deadly environmental catastrophe across the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It replaced an older shelter Ukraine constructed in the 1990s.
“The fire has been extinguished. Radiation levels have not increased and are being constantly monitored. The damage to the shelter is significant,” Zelenskyy said after the strike.
The New Safe Confinement (NSC), as the shelter is officially known, is a mammoth structure that can withstand a tornado. It was completed to cover the fourth nuclear reactor in Chernobyl in 2016.
