DISINFO: Ukraine could face new Chernobyl disaster due to a nuclear graveyard
SUMMARY
Despite the Russian help, the Ukrainian leadership created a new nuclear graveyard right near Kyiv. This facility may lead to a new Chernobyl disaster in the future. The new nuclear graveyard impedes the development of the exclusion zone as a tourist route and forever assigns to it the status of a radiation-dangerous territory. In the future, the nuclear graveyard can store radioactive waste from European countries.
RESPONSE
No evidence provided. A new facility was actually commissioned in the Chernobyl zone. This is not a “nuclear graveyard”, but a plant for the processing of liquid radioactive waste that was generated as a result of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. In test mode, the plant was launched in July of this year. The new plant only accepts nuclear waste that still pollutes the exclusion zone after the Chernobyl disaster. During processing, the radioactive waste goes through several stages of conversion and by cementing it turns into solid radioactive waste, which is considered a safer form for storage. On 5th September, the plant provided the first 120 packages of such waste for disposal, all of which will be placed in a specially equipped near-surface solid radioactive waste storage, which guarantees 300 years of safe disposal. This idea is not new; it was put into operation back in 2008. The new Chernobyl disaster recovery plant is located in a special exclusion zone, where a number of radioactive waste management facilities are located - it does not threaten neither the environment nor human lives. Nuclear waste from the countries of the European Union will not be brought to Ukraine for disposal at local storage facilities. This is prohibited by the international “Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management”, which Ukraine ratified in 2000. According to the document, all waste should be stored in the territory of the state where they were produced (Preamble, paragraph (xi)). Further debunking by StopFake. This message uses the catastrophe of Chernobyl in 1986 to advance pro-Kremlin aims. See here and here for other examples.