"Tchernobyl in the War"
- mfellbom
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
Copyright : Lucas Menget
"Chernobyl... It's a war beyond all wars. Man finds salvation nowhere. Not on Earth, not in the water, not in the sky."
Svetlana Alexievitch, Nobel Prize in Litterature
This sentence from Svetlana Alexievitch, in her book "Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster"(1997), opens this excellent documentary made by Lucas Menget.
Just another piece of news, that we "felt passing by" like a draft, before we moved further with the news flow... On February 14, 2025, a Russian drone hit and caused damage to the containment arch that protects the sarcophagus of reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. According to a Greenpeace team, that went to check it out, 50% of the Northern part of the roof, as well as part of the Southern roof and side walls, were reportedly affected by the fires caused. The roof covering is reportedly severely damaged. The structure is at risk of corrosion from snow and water infiltration. According to Greenpeace, it has "lost its protective function for the equipment it houses."
The containment arch was placed in 2016, using a rail system, around the metal sarcophagus that encloses reactor number 4 at Chernobyl. Its purpose is to prevent the release of radioactive particles from the reactor, which exploded in 1986 during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, into the environment. Its design and construction took twenty years. It is the largest mobile structure on land.
“The damage assessment process is only just beginning, but the initial evaluation shows that the future of the entire project is, at best, uncertain,” said Jan Vande Putte, nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Ukraine. He believes it is “highly likely that the entire Chernobyl arch will have to be moved on its rail system back to where it was built so that repairs can be carried out, which will represent an enormous cost.”
"To date, according to Greenpeace, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s radiation monitoring network has not detected any increase in environmental radioactivity levels." This was written in March 2025.
Copyright : Lucas Menget
Lucas Menget, who has already allowed us to share several documentaries and articles, came back from Chernobyl a month ago, as the 1986 catastrophe soon approaches its 40 years creepy anniversary. Visiting the "Exclusion zone, forbidden to any normal activity" is possible only for a very short period of time due to huge radioactive levels inside the sarcophagus and still extraordinarily high in its surroundings, meaning, that Lucas stayed overnight 80 kilometers from the power plant to go back and forth to it through higly contaminated areas. The power plant is out of function, but, still, is monitiored, assessed, repaired day and night by roughly 1000 people. Among others, it needs a constant water-cooling not to return to excess heat levels, that could provoke another meltdown.
Today, the power plant is located in the middle of the longest and deadliest war in Europe since WWII, and the extent and number of problems related to this (and other) geopolitical problems and threats may be the reason for which the international community has not (yet?) decided to do something about repairing the sarcophagus (estimated cost around 500 million €...).
Thus, Chernobyl has once again become a ticking bomb.
Follow the link to see the 25 min documentary, that came out on Saturday March 28 on Arte, below. There is no English version (yet?) but I know many of you either read and understand French or German...
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