The second explosion at Chernobyl came at 1:59 a.m. On February 14, 2025, when a Russian drone struck the protective arch shielding the wreckage of Reactor No. 4, according to Ukrainian officials.
The attack did not breach the inner sarcophagus or raise radiation levels outside the structure, but it damaged the New Safe Confinement, a $2.1 billion steel arch completed in 2019 to contain the radioactive remains of the world’s worst nuclear accident. The International Atomic Energy Agency warned the damage could shorten the structure’s 100-year lifespan, undermining its core purpose.
For Klavdiia Omelchenko, a 19-year-old textile worker in Pripyat when the original explosion tore through Reactor No. 4 on April 26, 1986, the drone strike revived memories of that night. She did not hear the blast but woke to rumors, then fled with only documents and cosmetics as her home became part of the 2,600-square-kilometer exclusion zone that remains uninhabited today. She returned in 1993 to perform in the plant’s cafeteria, saying that return “wasn’t as scary as now. Back then, at least, there was no bombing.”
The New Safe Confinement, described as the largest movable steel structure ever built — taller than the Statue of Liberty and wider than the Colosseum — was designed to allow decades for the unstable Soviet-era sarcophagus to be dismantled safely. Inside, 180 tonnes of nuclear fuel and four to five tonnes of radioactive dust remain trapped beneath layers of concrete and steel.
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Ukrainian officials and Western experts say a full repair of the damaged arch is required within four years or its guaranteed lifespan can no longer be assured. The cost is estimated at up to €500 million (£432 million), a sum Ukraine’s war-strained budget has not yet secured.
Russian forces occupied the site in the early weeks of their 2022 invasion, and Moscow has since launched repeated drone and missile strikes along flight paths near the plant. The February 2025 strike marked the first known direct hit on the New Safe Confinement, though Russia denied targeting the facility, accusing Kyiv of staging the attack.
Oleh Solonenko, head of a radiation safety shift at the plant, said the strike made once-unthinkable attacks on nuclear facilities a reality. “What once seemed unthinkable — strikes on nuclear facilities and other hazardous sites — has now become reality,” he told the Associated Press.
On the 40th anniversary of the original disaster, the site remains one of the world’s most vulnerable nuclear locations, not because of aging containment alone, but because war has returned to threaten what was built to contain the past.
Did the drone strike increase radiation levels outside the containment structure?
No. Monitors detected no rise in radiation levels outside the New Safe Confinement after the February 14, 2025 strike, and no injuries were reported.
Why is the New Safe Confinement structure important if it didn’t prevent the drone strike?
It was built to prevent the release of radioactive material if the original sarcophagus collapses, buying time for its safe dismantling over decades while shielding against environmental release.
