Russia has sent a rescue team to Chernobyl, but why is it doing so?
On October 27th, Russia announced that it was sending a rescue team to Chernobyl in order to bring back radioactive materials from the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster. The area around Chernobyl is still very contaminated and is considered unsafe for humans to live in. This means that any sort of cleanup work must be done by robots or remote control vehicles. However, some nuclear material remains in the ground and must be collected before any more work can be done.
It’s unclear what kind of nuclear material Russia plans on removing from Chernobyl, but some experts believe that it could include cesium-137 and strontium-90. These are two radioactive isotopes that were released into the atmosphere during the explosion at Reactor 4 in 1986. They were carried all over Europe by wind currents and have since settled on soil and plants.
The cleanup operation at Chernobyl has been ongoing since 2016, when robots first began removing highly radioactive material from inside Reactor 4. The process will take years to complete as robots have been designed specifically for this job, which means they need a lot of time to move around the debris safely.
