Seeing Through the Invisible: Radiation Spikes Detected in Chernobyl During the Russian Invasion Show Possible Evidence of Fabrication
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Chernobyl, an iconic symbol in our social imaginary that represents everything that may go wrong with radioactivity, was taken by the Russian occupation forces, as part of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. During the first 48 hours of this situation, it was officially reported that the Automatic Radiation Monitoring System (ASKRS) of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone had detected abnormally high radiation values. The intense traffic of heavy military vehicles, which would be stirring up radioactive dust, was initially pointed out as the root cause for the reported radiation spikes.This talk will comprehensively describe the research that has been performed around this incident. Among other things, I have reconstructed the events through OSINT, talked to nuclear experts and visited radiological laboratories to analyze equipment and software. Eventually, I gained access to the data transmitted during those days by the wireless radiation monitoring devices in Chernobyl, thus being able to demonstrate that the patterns identified in the radiation spikes detected during the 24th and 25th of February 2022 show the possibility that data may have been fabricated.Evidence confirms that the radiation levels depicted by a very specific set of real-time radiation maps, which during those days were consulted by millions of people and also consumed as a single source of information by media outlets and official entities, did not correspond to the actual physical conditions of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. This research elaborates the software-based data manipulation as a plausible explanation.