Of course not. No one said the equipment wasn't onboard. The story says it wasn't turned on.
The way the Chernobyl disaster became public was when Scandinavian power Reactor workers started setting off Radiation alarms COMING to work...
There have been two previous threads on this that I know of. The comments on those are much more technical and not as emotional as the ones on this post.
Also realize the NY Post is a tabloid and their use of the words "Radiation Sickness" is pretty cavalier.