nuclear-news

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia power plant: How prepared is Europe for a future nuclear disaster?

It raises the question, too, of whether we should rely on nuclear power at all.

euro news.next, By Camille Bello   31/03/2023

Russia’s invasion has repeatedly knocked out Ukraine’s electricity grid, causing blackouts at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – Europe’s largest – where a constant power supply is needed to prevent the reactors from overheating.

On March 9, the plant blacked out for the sixth time since the occupation, forcing nuclear engineers to switch to emergency diesel generators to power its essential cooling equipment running.

“Each time we are rolling a dice,” Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), warned at the time. “And if we allow this to continue time after time, then one day, our luck will run out”.

On Monday, during a meeting with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, Grossi reiterated the situation “isn’t getting any better” as relentless fighting in the area keeps the facility at risk of a disaster.

The IAEA watchdog has called for a “protection zone” around the plant but has failed to devise terms that would satisfy both Ukraine and Russia.

Grossi told the AP on Tuesday he believed a deal was “close”. However, Zelenskyy, who opposes any plan that would legitimise Russia’s control over the facility, said he was less optimistic a deal was near. “I don’t feel it today,” he said.

Is Zaporizhzhia really at risk?

Nuclear power plants are designed to withstand a wide range of risks, but no operating nuclear power plant has ever been caught up in modern warfare.

Because of the repeated crossfire, Zaporizhzhia’s last reactor was shut down in September as a precautionary measure. But external power is still essential to run critical cooling and other safety systems.

Fears about Zaporizhzhia have exacerbated existing concerns around our lack of preparedness for any nuclear-related incident, laying bare anxieties not necessarily around war-related incidents but about climate change and Europe’s old reactors, for instance. 

It raises the question, too, of whether we should rely on nuclear power at all.

March 11 marked the 12-year anniversary of the massive earthquake and tsunami that caused the second-worst nuclear accident in history at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.

The anniversary of the catastrophic meltdown that left 160,000 people displaced and cost the Japanese government over €176 billion, was another reminder of the potential threat of a nuclear spill, but a number of other recent events have also raised the alarm in Europe, not least the war in Ukraine.

‘We are not properly prepared’

Europe’s nuclear power reactors are ageing – they were built on average 36.6 years ago – and recent checkups in France have found cracks in several facilities.

Some energy experts have warned that the extreme weather events brought on by climate change could pose a serious threat to the EU’s 103 nuclear reactors, which account for about one-quarter of the electricity generated in the bloc.

Jan Haverkamp, a senior nuclear energy and energy policy expert for Greenpeace, said the chances of Europe seeing a large accident like Fukushima were now “realistic” and “we should take them into consideration”.

“We are not properly prepared,” he told Euronews Next…………………………………………………….

The maintenance of a nuclear plant depends on a number of factors, such as its design and its supervision history. But there are other factors that come into play, such as error-prone humans, earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, flooding, tornadoes or even in the case of Zaporizhzhia, acts of war…………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/31/chernobyl-fukushima-europe-prepared-nuclear-disaster-ukraine-earthquake-meltdown-radiation

April 2, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, Ukraine