The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recognizes the immediate death toll as 31 — a number that includes plant workers and firefighters responding to the disaster — though many more people ultimately died as a result of the radiation exposure.
“If it were to be damaged, that is very, very dangerous,” says Dr. Lydia Zablotska, a professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of California, San Francisco.
As Zablotska explains to PEOPLE, a “sarcophagus” surrounding the nuclear reactors (and providing a shield covering the radiation materials stored at the site) was completed in 2017.
“So if there was an explosion at that site, if those particles were released, they would disperse with prevailing winds,” Zablotska says. “This happened in 1986. Winds were blowing northwest and [radioactive particles] spread out all over Northern Europe.”
While Zablotska acknowledges it’s currently unclear what Russian intentions are with the site or surrounding area, she worries what could happen to the radioactive material, even unintentionally.
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Zablotska says there are also risks to the well-being of the scientists who work to maintain the site day-to day.
“There is a staff who is maintaining, monitoring, dedicated their lives to protecting it, and I worry about them in all this,” she says. “This is the the most contaminated site in the world.”
By some accounts, those scientists were not at work on Thursday.
The nuclear power plant is less than 60 miles from Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million people that’s faced increasing threats since Russia began its invasion of the country early Thursday.
source: people.com
