nuclear-news

Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant’s main power line down for hours, no safety threat

 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-main-power-line-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-goes-down-no-safety-2024-05-23/

MOSCOW, May 23 (Reuters) – Russia said the main power line supplying the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine was down for more than three hours on Thursday, though there was no threat to safety.

The six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia plant, held by Russia and located close to the front line of the conflict in Ukraine, are not in operation but it relies on external power to keep its nuclear material cool and prevent a catastrophic accident.

The Russian management said on their official channel on the Telegram app that the reasons for the outage, which had not caused any change in radiation levels, were being investigated.

It had initially said the main 750 kilovolt (kV) “Dniprovska” power line went down at 1:31 p.m. local time (1031 GMT), while the 330 kV “Ferosplavnaya” line was supplying power to the plant now.

It later reported that the Dniprovska line was restored at 4:49 p.m. local. Power supply to ZNPP is possible via both lines, it added.

The Dniprovska power line also went down for almost five hours on March 22, highlighting what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said were “ever present dangers to nuclear safety and security” from the Russia-Ukraine war.

Russia and Ukraine have each accused the other at various times of shelling the Zaporizhzhia plant, which is Europe’s largest. Both deny such accusations.

The IAEA has said that the ZNPP has been experiencing major off-site power problems since the conflict began in early 2022, exacerbating the nuclear safety and security risks confronting the site.

May 25, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Military activities near Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).

The International Atomic Energy Agency is continuing to monitor observance
of the five concrete principles aimed at protecting Ukraine’s
Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) during the military conflict, where
nuclear safety and security remain precarious, Director General Rafael
Mariano Grossi said on 9 May in the IAEA’s Update 227.

During the week of 1-8 May, the IAEA team stationed at the ZNPP have heard military activities
on most days, including artillery and rocket fire some distance away from
the plant, as well as small arms fire both near to and further away from
the site. On 8 May IAEA experts on site reported that there was an air raid
alarm with restrictions on movement outside of buildings for about 90
minutes, which the ZNPP informed the team was allegedly due to drones being
present in the area of the cooling pond. The experts did not hear any
explosion during the period of the restriction on movement. Earlier on 8
May however another air raid alarm was heard, again restricting outside
movement and resulting in the team’s planned walkdown within the site.

 Modern Power Systems 14th May 2024

https://www.modernpowersystems.com/news/newsrussian-military-steps-up-activity-at-znpp-11770581

May 17, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

MISTAKES THAT CAUSED THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER

BY S. FLANNAGAN/MAY 12, 2024  https://www.grunge.com/1562994/mistakes-that-caused-chernobyl-disaster/

The Chernobyl disaster remains one of the most chilling incidents of the nuclear age. The Chernobyl Power Complex was the name of a nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine just a few miles from the Belarus border near the city of Pripyat. At the time Ukraine was part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and Chernobyl was constructed between 1970 and 1977 as part of the USSR’s nuclear expansion program. It had four reactors, each capable of generating colossal amounts of energy to enrich the Soviet bloc. On April 26, 1986, a series of errors caused reactor 4 to experience an unexpected surge of power that started a huge fire, which led to several explosions and the biggest release of radioactive material into the atmosphere in history.

Local areas such as Pripyat were evacuated, but a delayed emergency response saw the area transformed into an uninhabitable no-go zone. It has been reported that 31 people lost their lives in the immediate aftermath of the meltdown, including six firefighters who received double the fatal amount of radiation as they attempted to extinguish the blaze. But a delayed response saw the amount of material released into the environment and spread across Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and parts of Central Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people were involved in the clean-up, many of whom went on to develop health problems such as cancer as a consequence of the exposure. Here are some of the mistakes that led to the meltdown, and to the local area being largely uninhabited even today.

A FLAWED DESIGN

The World Nuclear Association notes that one of the key issues that led to the meltdown of Reactor 4 which resulted in the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 was the flawed design of the reactor itself. Each of Chernobyl’s four reactors was of a new Soviet design known as “reaktor bolshoy moshchnosty kanalny,” or RBMK. RBMK reactors were one of two reactor designs to emerge from the USSR in the 1970s. They employ a water-cooling system and graphite control rods that regulate fission, which creates nuclear energy.

On the night of the meltdown, operators were attempting to test whether residual steam pressure would be able to keep the reactor going in the event of a power cut long enough for the backup diesel generators to take over. However, in the course of the experiment, a huge and unexpected power surge hit the reactor, which was later found to have been caused by the RBMK’s enormous “void coefficient,” ultimately meaning that excess steam in the water cooling system would not be able to absorb neutrons in the system, resulting in the surge. After an investigation into these flaws, crews were tasked with upgrading other reactors in the Chernobyl Power Complex to make them safer, though over the years these other reactors have also eventually been decommissioned.

SAFETY ISSUES COVERED UP

But the flaws in the design of the RBMK-1000 reactor at Chernobyl that rendered it unsafe weren’t exactly a surprise to experts in the wake of the meltdown. In fact, the site had suffered several notable accidents and emergencies years before the shocking events of April 1986. But as we know now, those in charge of the Soviet nuclear program sought to cover up evidence that their reactors were unsafe, meaning that they continued to be operated despite such safety issues leading to the worst nuclear accident in history.

According to a 2021 report published by Reuters, it was revealed that the side had a radiation leak as early as 1982 and that numerous accidents occurred at the plant in 1984. The Soviet government was reportedly aware of the truth that Chernobyl was fundamentally unsafe as a power plant as early as 1983 but kept the matter a secret from the public.

The same instinct among the Soviet powers that be to cover their tracks led to their delayed order to evacuate the city of Pripyat until about Chernobyl 36 hours after the meltdown began, ultimately exposing thousands of locals to dangerous levels of radiation.

The nuclear operators on-site at the Chernobyl Power Complex were later identified as lacking in adequate training required to keep such a complicated and cutting-edge power station running effectively and safely. In the years following the devastating nuclear meltdown, the operators themselves were afforded a great deal of blame for the disaster in which many of them lost their lives.

Indeed, the experiment that the Chernobyl nuclear operators were performing on the night of the meltdown was flawed as a result of human error, which largely came down to the team’s lack of understanding of the reactor’s internal systems. None of them expected the surge of power that the experiment unleashed. The experiment itself was later reported to have been unauthorized, though plant director Viktor Bryukhanov, chief engineer Nikolai Fomin, and his deputy, Anatoly Dyatlov later received 10-year prison sentences for the disaster. Official Soviet government reports claimed that the operators, three more of whom were given prison sentences, had been negligent.

The lack of training that the operators were afforded resulted from what is now known to have been an almost complete lack of safety culture at the Chernobyl Power Complex, a characteristic of Soviet industry more generally at the time. No interest in maximum design accidents, hypothetical disasters that could then be mitigated against in design features, were of little interest to commissioners or designers of the RBMK-1000 reactor, who were also looking to reduce costs.

The safety of Chernobyl was further impacted by opacity within the Soviet hierarchy, which prevented subordinates from reporting issues and misgivings to their superiors, leading to a culture of silence in which errors were not course-corrected. Similarly, mistakes, including those around safety, were covered up, rather than treated as lessons to be learned from. “The attitude came from the race for the atomic bomb, “Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy writer Sehii Plokhy writer told The Guardian in 2018. “The sacrifice of health and life was almost expected. That culture was transferred to the nuclear power establishment.”

Further safety features were overlooked as director Viktor Bryukhanov, who was also in charge of the setting up of the reactors as well as providing accommodation for the operators, raced to keep the project on track. The science journal Nature reports that under his direction electric cables were installed without the required fire-resistant cladding, just one instance of the corners that were cut in the creation of the plant despite the potential calamity that might occur were something to go wrong with any of its reactors.

A lax attitude to safety continued even after the meltdown and the delayed evacuation of local people from the area around the site as it grew more and more radiated and became a danger to human life. In the aftermath, an international effort saw a concrete “sarcophagus” erected around the reactor intended to stop the spread of further radiation. However, the structure was only intended to be temporary and still requires a permanent solution to this day, with experts claiming that it and other stores of radioactive material from the world’s worst nuclear disaster constitute an ongoing risk to public safety if not adequately maintained.

May 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Grim nuclear anniversary: Zaporizhzhia must not repeat Chornobyl

Shaun Burnie, Jan Vande Putte and Daryna Rogachuk, 26 April 2024  https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/66648/grim-nuclear-anniversary-zaporizhzhia-chornobyl-ukraine/

Chornobyl is one of the most recognised synonyms for disaster in the world. Its legacy is a universal reminder of the horrific consequences of nuclear power when things goes wrong: on this day in 1986, a test procedure produced explosions at the power plant in Pripyat, Ukraine, causing a chain reaction that blew a colossal release of radioactive contamination across Europe and eventually much of the Northern Hemisphere.  

Millions of Ukrainians have been affected by the destruction of reactor unit 4 and the radiation it released into the environment, either directly or through their families, friends and colleagues and its impact is still felt across generations. 

Today, 38 years later, the spectre of nuclear catastrophe looms large – and not only in the abandoned region around Chornobyl: the ongoing illegal Russian military occupation of the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe and one of the 10 biggest in the world, installed by force the Russian state nuclear authority Rosatom. In doing so, Moscow placed in danger not only Ukraine, but most of Europe – and with chilling echoes of a Soviet era mentality that prioritised domination over life and safety and produced the catastrophe in Chornobyl. 

Chornobyl’s RBMK reactor design had evolved out of the Soviet Union’s 1950s military reactors used for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, and were known even then to be unsafe. Scientists warning of integral instabilities, including a ‘positive steam coefficient’ which could lead to an explosion, were ignored. Twenty years later, that design flaw and others led to two massive explosions that destroyed the Chornobyl unit 4 reactor and shook the world. 

In the years between 1986-1990, over 600,000 firefighters, soldiers, janitors, and miners – collectively known as ‘liquidators’ – were sent to the Chornobyl site after the explosion in an attempt to respond to the disaster. Many tens of thousands have suffered long term health consequences and death.

The Russian threat at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

By sidelining Zaporizhzhia’s Ukrainian engineers at gunpoint, and by deliberately firing missiles at Ukraine’s wider energy infrastructure, the Kremlin risks repeating terrible lessons from history. The Russian invasion presence places Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants – South Ukraine, Rivne, Khemelnitsky and especially Zaporizhzhia – at risk of an emergency power loss and station blackout.

Despite heroic efforts by Zaporizhzhia workers and citizens of nearby Energodar to barricade the main access road with vehicles, tyres and sandbags to block the advancing Russian troops, they were overwhelmed and the resulting assault damaged the plant, including its vital electricity infrastructure for maintaining the cooling function of the hot nuclear fuel. One reactor core producing heat for the electricity has the power of two million water cookers: if cooling stopped after shutdown, it would take only hours for the cooling water to boil off, expose the hot nuclear fuel to the air and melt down, leading to a new major nuclear disaster. In peacetime, power plant workers still have several options to restore cooling in an emergency, but in a war zone this is severely and constantly compromised. 

There is a long list of dangerous incidents caused by the Russian invasion, including the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam on 6 June 2023, which not only led to an enormous damage and suffering below the dam, but also emptied the Kakhovka reservoir providing cooling water for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. 

Nuclear history repeating itself?

The ultimate blow to nuclear safety however is the plan of Rosatom and Moscow to attempt to restart one or more reactors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. The existing cooling water resources are far from sufficient to cool an operational reactor. Rosatom would have to build a new pump system, which would not be as reliable, and it does not have the workforce and expertise to control an operational reactor, especially in a warzone. Nuclear energy is incompatible with a world marred by conflict and instability.

Russia might have launched a disinformation campaign to pave the way for blaming Ukraine in case something goes very wrong. Hiding behind false flag attacks might make it easier for them to take higher risks. That is why it is so important to remember Chornobyl today, and how it happened, through irresponsible deliberate decisions and acts by the Soviet system. 

Greenpeace Germany has written to Rafael Mariano Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General calling on him to make clear to Rosatom and the Russian government that restart of Zaporizhzhia under Russian control is unconscionable. The IAEA must do all it can to prevent restart and not cooperate with Rosatom, nor seek to accommodate the interests of the nuclear industry, or it risks repeating the grave mistakes of the past.

April 29, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment