Ukraine Nuclear Agency Mocks Russian Soldiers as ‘New Darwin Award Nominees’ for Stealing Dangerously Radioactive ‘Souvenirs’ from Chernobyl
Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images.
Energoatom, the Ukrainian government agency that oversees nuclear power plants, issued a scathing statement mocking Russian soldiers as “new Darwin Award nominees” in response to reports that they had stolen dangerously radioactive items from the Chernobyl nuclear plant to keep as “souvenirs.”
Chernobyl was the site of the world’s most catastrophic nuclear disaster in 1986, with much of the surrounding area retaining harmful levels of radiation and ongoing work to secure the site and clean up nuclear debris expected to continue for decades. The photo above, dated April 13, 2021, shows the “New Safe Confinement,” an additional protective dome constructed over the original sarcophagus that was built to enclose the destroyed Reactor No. 4.
The safety and security of the Chernobyl plant was among the top concerns amid the early phases of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin unswayed by the world’s understandable fears that attacks on the facility could result in a radiation leak or even another meltdown. Damage caused by Russian attacks caused the plant to lose power, but after a period operating on generators and backup power supplies, Ukrainian engineers were able to restore power.
After failing to take Ukraine’s capital city Kyiv, Russian troops retreated from the area, including Chernobyl, but not before causing themselves some serious misery. Energoatom officials said that some of the soldiers had unwisely camped out and dug trenches in the Red Forest, so named because the trees turned a startling crimson shade in the immediate aftermath of the 1986 disaster. The Ukrainian government has designated the area too dangerous for workers to enter, even with specialized protective equipment, due to the still-deadly levels of radiation. Camping in that forest, much less stirring up the toxic soil by driving heavy military equipment through and digging trenches, is an aggressively bad idea.
But some Russian soldiers managed to do something even dumber, according to the Energoatom statement, posted on their Telegram account on Saturday.
The statement was accompanied by a graphic for the Darwin Awards, the ignominious prize that honors people who contribute to human evolution by “eliminating themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner” from the gene pool, thereby increasing our species’ chances for long-term survival.
The Russian occupiers had “unauthorizedly entered” storage facilities for radioactive materials, said Energoatom’s statement (according to Google Translate), and “stole and damaged” the facilities’ contents, as well as looting and destroying offices and laboratories, which also contained radioactive items.
“Even a small part” of these radioactive materials are deadly “if handled unprofessionally and uncontrollably,” Energoatom noted, but the location and status of the missing materials was unknown.
After the “nuclear terrorism” of the Russian assault on Chernobyl and their soldiers’ unwise activity in the Red Forest, the agency added, these souvenir hunters were the “new Darwin Award nominees” and “will take Darwin’s prizes even from those doomed racists who inhaled the dust of the Red Forest.”
The statement concluded with a warning about the Russians’ possible fate: “After all, carrying such a souvenir with you for two weeks will inevitably lead to radiation burns, radiation sickness and irreversible processes in the body.”
