Old Photo From Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Falsely Shared As Nur Khan Airbase’s Control Room

Claim

Image of the control room at the Nur Khan airbase in Pakistan, following India’s precision military strikes during Operation Sindoor.

The archived version of the post can be seen here.

Fact

Newschecker ran a reverse image search, which led us to an uncropped and slightly zoomed-out version of the viral photograph in this CNN report, dated May 29, 2020, stating that it shows the abandoned Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in present-day Ukraine. The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident, a result of a flawed reactor design, which occurred on April 26, 1986, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.

Similar photos can be seen in these Telegraph and Daily Mail reports, stating that the control room, with its damaged machinery, is seen inside reactor No. 4 in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. A similar Alamy photo, too, from October 19, 2019, states that it shows the number 4 control (operations) room at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which further confirms that the viral claim is false. We learnt that the control room of reactor 4, where technicians tried and ultimately failed to prevent the worst nuclear disaster in history, was opened for tourists in 2019.

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Sources
CNN report, May 29, 2020
Telegraph report, April 19, 2011
Daily Mail report, March 14, 2022