Zaporizhye/ Washington/ Vienna: Russian forces claimed to have surrounded Ukraine’s biggest atomic plant, and called for its workers to be left alone to do their jobs. The UN nuclear watchdog has voiced concern after the development.
Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the Russian government had informed the agency that its troops had taken control of the area around the Zaporizhye plant in south-eastern Ukraine, the second biggest in Europe, housing six of the country’s 15 reactors.
In their letter to the IAEA, Russian officials insisted that Ukrainian staff at the plant were continuing to “work on providing nuclear safety and monitoring radiation in the normal mode of operation”.
However, the Ukrainian state enterprise running the country’s nuclear industry, Energoatom, accused the Russian military of “openly terrorizing employees of the station and residents of its satellite city Energodar”.
Video footage shared on social media by a Ukrainian official showed crowds of Ukrainians forming a barrier between the Russian forces and the nuclear plant, blocking their advance.
The interior ministry official, Anton Gerashchenko, said in a Facebook post: “Russian generals – change your minds! Do not create conditions for the new Chernobyl! Radiation knows no nationalities, one does not spare anyone! Go around the Energodar and Zaporizhye.”
Ukraine has asked the IAEA to declare a 30km safe zone around Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants.
Grossi told the IAEA board of governors meeting in Vienna: “It is of critical importance that the armed conflict and activities on the ground around Zaporizhye nuclear power plant and any other of Ukraine’s nuclear facilities in no way interrupts or endangers the facilities or the people working at and around them.”
The IAEA also said that a feed of radiation data from Zaporizhye had been interrupted on Tuesday and that Ukraine’s nuclear regulatory inspectorate (SNRIU) was trying to find out the reason for the break and to restore the flow of data.
The 6GW Zaporizhye Nuclear Power Plant, located in Energodar, Ukraine, is the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe. It is owned and operated by Ukraine’s national nuclear energy generating company NNEGC Energoatom.
Zaporizhye is one of the four operating NPPs in the country and generates up to 42 billion kWh of electricity, accounting for about 40% of the total electricity generated by all the Ukrainian NPPs and one-fifth of Ukraine’s annual electricity production.
Operational since 1984, the plant had generated more than 1.23 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity as of December 2021.
The Zaporizhye NPP consists of six pressurised water reactor (PWR) units commissioned between 1984 and 1995, with a gross electrical capacity of 1,000MW each.
Unit 5 of the NPP was reconnected to the United Power System of Ukraine following a scheduled outage in 2019. Similarly, Units 1, 3 and 4 were reconnected to the grid following scheduled outages in 2021. The scheduled outages facilitated the transition of the four units to switch to the nuclear fuel from an alternative supplier Westinghouse.
The Zaporizhye nuclear power facility is situated on a 104.7ha site on the banks of the Kakhovka reservoir. The Steppe zone of Ukraine was selected because of available infrastructure at the nearby Zaporozhe Thermal Power Plant, land unsuitable for agriculture and its distance from foreign territories.
Each generating block of the plant consists of a VVER-1000/V-320 reactor, K-1000-60/1500-2 steam turbine and TWW-1000-4 generator. The Soviet-designed VVER-1000s are PWRs designed to operate for 30 years.
In 2021, the fourth 750kV overhead line from the NPP to the Kakhovska substation was commissioned and the plant outdoor switchyard was expanded, which reduced transmission constraints and enabled 17 million kWh a day of additional electricity production by the plant.
Units 1 and 2 underwent a lifetime extension, which involved the modernisation of equipment as well as installation of tension sensors and other advanced safety systems, following the March 2011 Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster.
The central radiation monitoring panel of the NPP was renovated in February 2021. The panel features an automatic system to monitor all radiation and technological parameters pertaining to the condition of the power units, the spent nuclear fuel drying storage facility site and radioactive waste treatment complex, as well as the area surrounding the plant.
Following the breakup of the USSR, spent fuel could no longer be transported to Russia, and the shortage of free space in the cooling pools demanded a spent-fuel dry storage facility (SFDSF) at the site. The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine issued a license for the development of the first SFDSF at Zaporizhye NPP in July 2001. Zaporizhye is the first Ukrainian NPP with VVER type reactors to include an SFDSF with 50-year service life.
The spent nuclear fuel from the reactors is stored in cooling pools for four to five years until the residual energy and radioactivity decrease. It is then transferred to the SFDSF.
The storage system can accommodate more than 9,000 spent-fuel assemblies in 380 ventilated storage casks of 144t each. The facility began operations in August 2004 and 167 casks have already been installed on the site.
Rafael Grossi also raised concern over a report from the SNRIU that since Russians took over the Chernobyl plant, site of the 1986 disaster in northwestern Ukraine near the Belarus border, the staff there had not been permitted to go home.
The US deputy envoy to the IAEA, Louis Bono, said: “The Ukrainian staff at the site have not been allowed to leave and have been forced to work multiple shifts. This added stress on staff performing critical tasks further jeopardizes the safety and security of the site and the public.”
In his remarks, Grossi said: “It is of utmost importance that the staff working at [the Chernobyl plant] are able to do their job safely and effectively and that their personal wellbeing is guaranteed by those who have taken control,”
The remains of the reactor core which exploded in 1986 are buried under concrete at the site, and there are also spent fuel storage facilities and a large amount of radioactive dust in the topsoil of the surrounding area.
The churning up of the soil by Russian military vehicles caused limited radiation spikes. In a statement, Energoatom said: “Being in the exclusion zone now and apparently not having the skills to ensure personal safety when working in radioactively contaminated areas, the invaders are exposed to significant external and internal radiation, which will undoubtedly manifest itself in the form of cancer.”
On Sunday, the Ukrainian authorities said Russian missiles had struck the site of a radioactive waste disposal facility in Kyiv. The day before, an electrical transformer in another waste facility in Kharkiv was damaged. In both cases, there was no radioactive release, but the incidents highlighted the potential threat of ecological disaster from a war underway in a country with extensive nuclear industry.
The American Nuclear Society (ANS), an association of industry professionals, is seeking to send material support to Ukraine to help nuclear workers there.
“The staff at Ukraine’s nuclear power plants must be able to fulfil their duties without interruption undue pressure or the fear of being killed or injured,” the ANS said in a statement. “Ukraine’s nuclear workers need their rest between shifts, access to their homes and peace of mind that their loved ones are safe.
The society’s president, Steven Nesbit, said he hoped that the Russian invaders were aware of the dangers of a nuclear accident.
“All I can say is it’s hard to believe that they wouldn’t have a sensitivity to the issues here,” Nesbit said. “Russia and Vladimir Putin need to be taking all steps they can to avoid becoming even more of a pariah nation than they have become.”