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Zaporizhzhia is a wake-up call demonstrating the vulnerability of nuclear plants to deliberate acts of war. 

Varrie Blowers, Secretary of BANNG discusses the implications of the war
in Ukraine in the latest column for Regional Life, April, 2022.

In the early hours of 4 March, fire was reported at Zaporizhzhia, the 6-reactor
nuclear power station in Ukraine, Europe’s largest. The Russian army was
carrying out a premeditated attack. A few days before, it had seized
Chernobyl, the site in April, 1986 of the world’s worst nuclear
accident……..to date.

It was, mercifully, a training building that was
on fire. Nonetheless, this attack on an active nuclear plant was
unprecedented and in clear breach of the Geneva Conventions.

But Russia was not deterred. Had there been a meltdown in a reactor or fire in the
radioactive waste stores, the people of Ukraine would have been subject to
a nuclear catastrophe. And the radioactive fallout of a nuclear incident of
a magnitude worse than that of Chernobyl, would have had far-reaching and
terrifying consequences.

The incident shows for the first time the dangers
of war in a nuclearised country. Nuclear plants do not seem to have been
designed to cope with war. Nor can they just be switched off and abandoned.

The workers at Zaporizhzhia, it has been reported, are being forced to work
in conditions of exhaustion, hunger and stress – when mistakes could be
made.

While we hope never to experience such acts on our shores, there is
the ever- present threat of terrorism and cyber-attack wreaking havoc on
nuclear installations. Given what has happened, the Government should be
disengaging from nuclear, not engaging in a gung-ho rush to build new
plants, including Bradwell B. Chernobyl and Fukushima alerted the world to
the dangers arising from nuclear accidents. Zaporizhzhia is a wake-up call
demonstrating the vulnerability of nuclear plants to deliberate acts of
war. 
BANNG 6th April 2022
https://www.banng.info/news/ukraine-nuclear-wake-up-call

April 9, 2022 - Posted by | incidents, Ukraine

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