The New Safe Confinement - the largest moveable land-based structure ever built - was constructed to cover a much larger area including the original shelter. […] It has two layers of internal and external cladding around the main steel structure - about 12 metres apart - with both breached in the drone incident. The NSC was designed to allow for the eventual dismantling of the ageing makeshift shelter from 1986 and the management and containment of radioactive waste. It is also designed to withstand temperatures ranging from -43°C to +45°C, a class-three tornado, and an earthquake with a magnitude of 6 on the Richter scale but, as the meeting heard, it was not designed to withstand missile or drone strikes. […]
These had all had to be put on hold and he outlined the scale of the damage - with the impact site seeing “pass-through damage to an area of 15 square metres”; damage to cladding from the fires that smouldered afterwards in an area of about 200 square metres; technological equipment - including the power supply system, ventilation and control systems - damaged by “drone fragments and blast wave”; the membrane, designed to help ensure the tightness of the shelter to protect the external environment, smouldered and more than 340 holes had to be cut in the shelter to allow firefighters to put out the fires. There was also damage to the steel structures of the arch and crane systems.
The IAEA’s Martin Gajdos, Technical Coordinator of the Department of Nuclear Safety and Security, said that the damage meant the New Safe Confinement “is currently unable to to perform its confinement function”.
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