Walls, roof collapse at Chornobyl nuclear power plant

At 2 p.m. on Feb. 12, part of the roof and the wall of the Chornobyl nuclear plant collapsed, Ukraine's emergencies services announced. The accident took down about 600 square meters of a covering adjacent to the ill-famed fourth unit. Emergencies services said radiation levels did not increase after the accident. Ukrainian officials said the preliminary cause for the collapse was heavy snowfall. Meanwhile, the plant’s administration gave itself two weeks to investigate the accident.

According to Chornobyl’s spokeswoman Maya Rudenko, normally snow is cleaned from the plant’s roof. However, she wouldn’t say if the snow was properly removed in the days before the accident, but noted that there were constant snowfalls and rain in recent days.

The collapsed area was in a machinery hall, part of plant's fourth unit, the one that exploded in 1986, spewing radiation over a large part of Europe. According to Rudenko, the collapsed area is over 50 meters away from exact place of explosion. The damaged building was part of a protective construction built after the catastrophe. While the sarcophagus covers the reactor itself, other protective structures are built around the entire unit. “We knew that there was a risk of collapsing of the old constructions,” Rudenko told Kyiv Post.

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The constructing of the new shelter that will cover Chornobyl's fourth unit is scheduled for completion for 2015. The collapsed area will be covered by it, too.


http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/walls-roof-collapse-at-chornobyl-nuclear-power-plant-320362.html