On 27 August, the general emergency response drill was conducted themed “Evacuation of staff from ChNPP buildings and facilities to Slavutych town in the event of a threat of seizure of the power plant”.

The purpose of the drill was to practice the actions of ChNPP staff and contractors at the threat of power plant’s seizure.

Based on the training scenario, there was a possibility of capturing the Chornobyl NPP site. Using the adopted instructions, the staff was notified of the threat and instructed on the follow-up actions. After that, the evacuation committee practiced their actions on identifying the number of necessary vehicles, the timeframe for evacuation as well as evacuation routes, and on the evacuation itself.

“The new reality sets new requirements. Occupation of a nuclear facility is no longer an extraordinary scenario today, therefore we have to train our actions in such events”, - says Dmytro Kondratov, head of ChNPP’s Emergency Response Department. “The drill stipulated not only evacuation from buildings of temporary stay of the staff, but also the overall logistics including transfer of staff all the way from the site to Slavutych town on buses. I can admit that all the departments involved worked off well, and the shift was promptly and timely evacuated to Slavutych. It is planned to conduct similar drills for all the personnel coming to ChNPP site for rotations”.