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Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, issues a televised appeal to help on March 3, 2022.Ukrainian Defense Ministry/Zuma Press
This story was first published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plantAccording to regional authorities, Russian military forces took control of the facility after it was set on fire by overnight shelling.
Petro Kotin, the acting president of the state-run nuclear power corporation, Energoatom, said workers had been allowed by Russian forces to go back to their posts at the nuclear plant, but had been working “under the barrels of machine guns” and they were “physically and mentally exhausted.”
The Ukrainian state inspectorate for nuclear regulation said in a statement on its Facebook page the plant had been “captured by the military forces of the Russian Federation.”
“Changes in the radiation state for the current time have not been recorded,” the statement said, adding that power units two and three had been disconnected from the network and nuclear installations were being cooled down.
But it warned that any “loss of the possibility to cool down nuclear fuel will lead to significant radioactive releases into the environment” that could “exceed all previous accidents at nuclear power plants, including the Chornobyl accident and the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said it had been informed that “a projectile overnight had hit a training building in the vicinity of one of the plant’s reactor units, causing a localized fire that was later extinguished.”
Kotin stated that Russian forces had broken through the Ukrainian barricade Thursday night with 100 armored trucks and had begun shelling it. He claimed they attacked administrative buildings and the checkpoint at entry to take control of the site.
“As of 9am on 4 March, the station staff were allowed to work, but had been working at the site for almost a day already, so they were physically and mentally exhausted. It is necessary that another shift comes to work,” Kotin said on Energoatom’s Telegram channel.
“The management of the station have been under the barrels of machine guns.” He claimed there were “dead and injured,” and the IAEA reported that two people had been wounded.
The IAEA confirmed there had been no release of radiation but he added: “The operator has reported that the situation remains very challenging and therefore it has not yet been possible to access the whole site to assess that all safety systems are fully functional.”
The agency said that, of the plant’s six reactors, one had been shut down for maintenance, two had undergone a controlled shut down, two were being held ‘in reserve” in lower power mode, and one was operating at 60 percent power.
Rafael Mariano Grossi (director general of the IAEA) stated that he offered to travel to Chernobyl to facilitate talks between Russia and Ukraine. These talks were aimed at establishing a framework to ensure that nuclear plants are safe during conflict. This included how to maintain power, protect the sites and maintain safety monitoring systems. Both sides were looking into the proposal.
Ukraine’s location of nuclear power plants
“The situation continues to be extremely tense and challenging,” Grossi said. “The physical integrity of the plant has been compromised with what happened last night. We are grateful that radiation was not released and that the reactors’ integrity were not compromised..”
The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr ZelenskyyOn Friday, he appealed directly at Russian citizens to protest the seizure by Russian troops of Ukraine’s nuclear power infrastructure.
“Russian people, I want to appeal to you: How is this possible? After all, we fought together in 1986 against the Chernobyl catastrophe,” he said in a televised address. Russia’s defense ministry blamed the attack on Ukrainian saboteurs, calling it a monstrous provocation.
Zelenskyy stated earlier, Friday, while the fire was still blazing. Europe “must wake up now. The largest nuclear power station in Europe is on the flambé. Russian tanks are currently shelling nuclear units. Those are the tank that have thermal vision, so they know where they are shelling.”
“If there will be an explosion, it will be the end to all of us: the end of Europe, the evacuation of Europe,” Zelenskyy added. “Only immediate action of Europe can stop Russian troops and prevent the death of Europe from the disaster at a nuclear station.”
He accused Russia of resorting to “nuclear terror.” “No country other than Russia has ever fired on nuclear power units,” he said. “This is the first time in our history, in the history of mankind, the terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror.”
At about 6 am on Friday, Ukraine time emergency services said the fire in the training building had been “localized.” The fire was extinguished shortly later, and there were no injuries among the plant staff, the emergency services said.
Joe Biden called Ukraine’s president at 3:40 AM Kyiv. According to the White House, Zelenskyy updated the US president on the incident and the two leaders urged Russia “to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site.”
After hearing about the fire, Boris Johnson (British prime minister) also spoke to Zelenskyy. A spokesperson for Downing Street The situation “gravely concerning,” adding: “The prime minister said the reckless actions of President Putin could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe. He said that the UK would do everything possible to ensure that the situation didn’t worsen.
“The prime minister said he would be seeking an emergency UN Security Council meeting in the coming hours, and that the UK would raise this issue immediately with Russia and close partners. Both leaders agreed a ceasefire was crucial.”
The confinement chambers for a nuclear reactor are designed to withstand high impact and even bombing. While the VVER pressure-water reactor itself is designed for emergency shut down, VVER reactors, on the other hand, are safer than those that exploded in Chernobyl in 1985.
The Zaporizhzhia plant in south-eastern Ukraine—which houses six of the country’s 15 nuclear reactors—as well as the neighboring town of Energodar, have been surrounded by Russian troops since the beginning of the week. Locals had gathered to block the road leading to the plant, creating a barrier against the invading force.
Mariana Budjeryn, a Ukrainian expert at the project on managing the atom at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, said the most vulnerable part of a nuclear plant was the power and water supply: “If the electricity is taken out, the back-up generators kick in, but if those don’t kick in or their diesel fuel is set on fire, for example, the pumps can’t pump cold water into the reactor and into the spent fuel pools. That’s necessary to keep the nuclear reaction moderated. Otherwise the water will boil out and the core will go critical and explode.”
She explained that confinement chambers are built to withstand some degree of impact and can stop the release radiation even if the core explodes. However, she said that the potential dangers from pools containing spent fuel rods are greater. “The fuel there is not as active, but they are usually overstuffed,” Budjeryn said. She said that less active, but more tightly packed material could be dangerous if the cooling system fails.
“And spent fuel pools are not covered by hardened concrete confinement chambers,” Budjeryn added.
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