More than 200 staff at the Chernobyl nuclear facility in northern Ukraine have been trapped and forced to work at gunpoint since Russian troops first seized control of the plant three weeks ago.

Technicians and support staff are approaching 500 hours on the job — “nonstop” work that is punctuated only by short naps on chairs in front of machinery or atop piles of clothes next to their workstations, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the first on conditions inside the complex, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster, since it was captured by Russian troops last month.