In late February, Russian troops invading Ukraine occupied the inactive Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, and occupied an exclusion zone housing decommissioned reactors and radioactive plant installations.
Since then, the 210 technicians and security guards responsible for its maintenance have not taken the right break.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations body responsible for nuclear safety, says a key pillar of nuclear safety is to enable operational personnel to make decisions without “undue pressure”. But overworked Chernobyl personnel are trying to carry out their duties amid an invasion that has already forced 2 million people to flee.
A combination of factors has raised fears of radioactive leakage from the Chernobyl site. But there is no chance of a nuclear collapse – the last reactor shut down more than two decades ago. At the moment, the main concerns concern the staff.
“I am deeply concerned about the difficult and stressful situation facing the staff of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the potential risks it poses to nuclear safety,” IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told a news conference on Tuesday. “I call on the forces that effectively control the site to make it easier for staff to move safely there.”
Communication and power failures
Concerns are exacerbated by communications and electricity problems.
On Tuesday, the IAEA said that data transmission from Chernobyl-based monitoring systems had been lost and that the Ukrainian regulator could only contact the plant via email. State-owned nuclear power plant Ukrenergo said Wednesday that a high-voltage power line connecting Kyiv and Chernobyl had been disconnected. This has forced workers to rely on diesel generators for electricity and there are concerns it could disrupt cooling pumps for spent fuel.
Radioactive fuel rods continue to heat after being removed from the reactors and must be cooled in water for years before being transported to a dry storage facility. More than 20,000 spent fuel rods are located in wet and dry on-site storage facilities.
If the cooling pools dry out, the radiation could harm the workers. However, experts said that a large release of radiation similar to the 1986 catastrophe was unlikely and would have no consequences outside the plant.
“It is also important to note that lake drying will not cause a nuclear reaction or explosion,” Mark Forman, an associate professor of nuclear chemistry at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, said in a statement.
A report by the Ukrainian state regulator in 2011 looked at different scenarios that could lead to failure. He found that if the power went out, the loss of the pool water cooling function would raise the temperatures – but not so much as to cause an accident.
In a tweet on Wednesday, the IAEA confirmed the thermal load of the spent fuel storage tank and the volume of cooling water was sufficient to efficiently remove heat without the need for electricity.
“The spent fuel there is so old that evaporation is unlikely to be a problem,” said Jan Haverkamp, a nuclear expert at Greenpeace. However, he added, “an explosion hitting the pool could cause overheating.”
The loss of electricity could also hit the ventilation system and make it more difficult to manage the radioactive dust.
“It can be much more difficult for employees to enter certain areas of the area without full protective clothing,” Forman said. “They may also have more difficulty changing in and out of their protective clothing. Some parts of the space may be out of bounds for employees until power is restored.”
Nuclear safety
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to fully invade Ukraine in February has put nuclear energy security at the forefront.
“If there is a nuclear accident, the cause will not be a tsunami caused by mother nature,” Grossi said Monday, referring to the earthquake that flooded the reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011. “Instead, it will be the the result of human failure to act when we knew we could. “
Chernobyl is a powerful symbol of nuclear disaster. In 1986, a sudden increase in power during a reactor test destroyed Unit 4 of the poorly designed nuclear power plant in what was then part of the Soviet Union. The ensuing fire released clouds of radioactive material into the environment that led authorities to create a blockade zone and evacuate hundreds of thousands of people. Dozens are believed to have lost their lives as a direct result of the disaster.
Radioactivity levels have since dropped. Some residents of the exclusion zone have returned to their homes and live in areas with above average levels but not fatal. The radiation jumped unexpectedly in February when Russian troops entered the area, possibly due to heavy vehicles lifting a layer of vegetation and throwing dust into the air.
The IAEA has found that the levels do not pose a risk to the public. But the unprecedented reality of war in a country operating nuclear power plants has raised the specter of nuclear disaster.
The Russian military bombed Europe’s largest nuclear plant last week before occupying the site. Although there were no security incidents, it was the first time military explosives had hit a nuclear facility in operation.
“We have entered into something that the industry has completely denied,” Haverkamp said. “Nuclear power is not a source of energy that belongs to a state of war.”
Edited by: Jennifer Collins
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