“In February 2025, a cheap Russian drone tore through Chornobyl’s confinement shelter. Workers warn the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident is not safe yet”
| April 26, 2026 theconversation.com
The dosimeter clipped to your chest ticks faster the moment you step off the designated path inside the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Step back, and it slows again – an invisible line between clean ground and contamination.
Above rises the “new safe confinement” (NSC) – the largest movable steel structure ever built, taller than the Statue of Liberty, wider than the Colosseum, its arch curving overhead like an aircraft hangar built for giant planes.
Completed in 2019 at a cost of $2.5bn (£1.85bn) and funded by 45 countries, the NSC was built to shield the world from what lies beneath it. It sits at the heart of a vast exclusion zone, a radioactive landscape the size of Cyprus, largely abandoned by humanity. Stray dogs roam the plant in packs – workers advise against petting them.