RUNNING ON EMPTY

Chernobyl Workers on Duty Since Russia Invaded Finally Allowed to Clock Off

Management said 50 staff members unlucky enough to be on the job when Russian forces seized the plant had finally been rotated out.

More than four dozen employees at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were allowed to go home after pulling the mother of all double shifts, having worked without relief at the station since it was seized by invading Russian forces on Feb. 24. Management at the plant said Sunday that the 50 staff members had been rotated out and replaced, according to the Associated Press. Authorities did not share details on any negotiations that had taken place to allow the exhausted workers to go home. Officials had previously loudly voiced their fears for the safety of the employees at the decommissioned plant. “I’m deeply concerned about the difficult and stressful situation facing staff at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant and the potential risks this entails for nuclear safety,” the International Atomic Energy Committee’s director general, Rafael Grossi, said in a March 8 statement. “I call on the forces in effective control of the site to urgently facilitate the safe rotation of personnel there.”