Locked up in the Chernobyl power plant since their night shift three weeks ago, the 210 Ukrainian technicians and employees continue to do their work tirelessly and tirelessly. Malnourished and stressed, they need help, says the Wall Street Journal, who had access to some of them, to their relatives, but also to the messages and videos they exchanged.
It was 10 a.m., sixteen days after the start of the Russian war in Ukraine, when a landline phone rang in the Chernobyl power plant. The site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster had become an increasingly dangerous makeshift prison.
The dispatcher picked up and then passed the handset to the team leader, Valentin Heiko, who has worked for a long time at the disused plant. Heiko told the executives on the other end of the line that the situation for the 210 technicians and employees was desperate; they were held hostage while continuing to monitor thousands of spent fuel rods.
The evening before, a new face-to-face had pitted the exhausted technicians who have custody of the nuclear waste and the Russian soldiers who have made them work under the threat of Russian arms since the start of the war.
“The psychological state is deteriorating”, said Valentin Heiko, who is aware of the executives stationed at premises 45 kilometers away, according to the accounts of two people who participated in the call. Some technicians, who demand to return home, threatened to abandon their posts despite the Russian tanks stationed around the site.
The team leader, who celebrated his 60th birthday in captivity in early March, explained that it was his duty to stay as long as necessary. He added :
Everyone wants to leave, but we know we have to stay.
Technicians and other personnel at Chernobyl have been working continuously since February 23. Arriving at 9 p.m. that evening for a single night watch to monitor electrical transmission levels and the temperature in the plant’s huge sarcophagus where the radioactive waste lies, they have now been on duty for almost five hundred hours . They steal a few hours of sleep here and there, in an armchair in front of beeping and flashing machines or on a pile of clothes next to their workstations.
Russian soldiers follow them everywhere
Their diet is limited to oatmeal and canned food, prepared by a 70-year-old cook who once even collapsed from fatigue. Their mobile phones have been confiscated and they are followed everywhere by Russian soldiers in the reinforced concrete maze that is the plant.
For weeks, international nuclear regulators have been trying to understand what is happening inside the Chernobyl compound, where the state of equipment and the living conditions of employees remain unclear due to conflicting versions of the facts put forward by the Ukrainians. and by the Russians.
The journalists of Wall Street Journal were able to get in touch with employees trapped inside, they analyzed videos and text messages sent to their families and spoke with more than a dozen relatives, friends, plant managers and local elected officials. the Wall Street Journal was also able to view audio recordings of a call that takes place daily at 10 a.m. between the plant and an office in the town of Slavoutich, built by the Soviet Union to house Chernobyl workers after the catastrophic explosion of reactor no. 4 in 1986.
This survey reveals the image of a team that is too small, made up of technicians who have been working under duress for three weeks. One of them has a thyroid disorder and needs treatment, as do several others with high blood pressure. Russian soldiers allow employees to make one-minute calls to their families, during which they confide in their utter exhaustion as well as symptoms like dizziness, nausea and terrible headaches.
On a daily basis, the Ukrainian anthem at full volume
An exhaustion that borders on mutiny, as the employees sometimes have words with their captors about the nature of the war launched by Russia and even organize acts of rebellion. Every morning at 9 a.m. the Ukrainian national anthem – “Ukraine has not perished yet” – is played loudly through the loudspeakers. The Ukrainian staff listens hand on heart, then goes back to work.
Their families, meanwhile, will soon arrive short of heat and power, trapped by Russian troops surrounding Slavoutich (nicknamed “Atomic City”), where residents ring church bells and honk horns to alert everyone. the world as the bombers approach. They pleaded for a humanitarian corridor to be set up to evacuate exhausted employees from
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Joe Parkinson et Drew Hinshaw
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