UN nuclear agency ‘extremely concerned’ about safety of Zaporizhia power plant | International

Beyond Russian President Vladimir Putin’s periodic warnings to resort to his atomic missiles, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has brought a much more certain nuclear threat to a country that has already suffered one of the biggest accidents in history, that of Chernobyl, in 1986. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, occupied on March 4, 2022 by Moscow’s forces, is in “an unprecedented situation”, according to what the President declared on Friday. Director General of the International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA), Rafael Grossi. , who declares himself “extremely concerned” about security.

Two years ago, the Russian military bombed the facility to take control, much to the bewilderment of half the world. Since then, it has suffered eight total blackouts that have forced its staff to rely on diesel generators to cool its six reactors, and in the past two weeks it has relied on only one power line out of ten that powered it before its resumption, without any other emergency power supply.

As the third year of war begins, the precarious operation of the factory continues to be a source of extreme concern. Since the start of hostilities, the head of the IAEA has visited Ukraine nine times to supervise it. The agency has a team of inspectors on site who quickly report explosions and military activities around them in one location, Energodar, on the south bank of the Dnieper, where aerial alarms are constant. The permanent lack of energy affects not only the cooling capacity of reactors, but also “other functions essential to nuclear, technological and physical security”, according to the agency.

The fact that an installation of this type continues to operate under these conditions constitutes, in Grossi’s words, “an unprecedented situation in the history of nuclear energy”, something “clearly unsustainable”, a- he declared. “I remain extremely concerned about the nuclear safety of the plant,” added the director general. For the past two weeks, the plant has relied on a single 750-kilovolt line to provide the electricity it needs, with no backup power in the event of an outage. Agency inspectors said they hoped that in the coming days another 330 kilovolt plant would be put into operation to serve as a backup. Until the invasion, the power station had six lines of this power and four others of 750 to guarantee its operation.

The director general of the organization, who met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February to discuss the situation of the country’s five power plants, plans to travel to Russia this Tuesday, where he is likely to will meet with Putin and who both address the situation in which the Energodar factory finds itself.

The president of Energoatom, Peter Kotin, assured this Monday that the anniversary of the purchase of the plant comes at a particularly delicate moment, because the six-year period of use of nuclear fuel is about to expire. Furthermore, according to him, the Russians do not allow qualified Ukrainian nationals to work in the factory, who have been replaced by poorly trained employees from Russian factories. “Will this date mark the start of the countdown to tragic and catastrophic events for all humanity?” asks an article commemorating the second anniversary of the takeover of the Zaporizhia power plant. So the answer is: “The likelihood of this happening is greater than ever.” »

Of the seven pillars, six are engaged

The closest moment to disaster in two years of Russian control occurred on June 6, when Kremlin troops blew up the dam at the Nova Kajovka hydroelectric power station (150 kilometers to the southwest). , causing the tank where it was located to drain. supplies the power plant and forces the filling of the pool with which the reactors are cooled. “Debates continue on the need to address the consequences of the floods in Kherson province,” the IAEA chief said on Monday, referring to the possible contamination spread by the catastrophic flood that generated the attack downstream, at the mouth of the Dnieper.

With a severe shortage of personnel – some employees of Ukrainian nationality left their jobs after the start of the war – and without guaranteed food, six of the seven pillars established by the IAEA to guarantee the security of the factory are compromised. , according to the inspectors: the proper functioning of its security systems, the safety and security of its personnel, the security of energy supply, the protection of the supply chain in logistics and transport, the implementation effective radiation monitoring systems inside and outside the plant, and communication with the regulator, the Ukrainian state corporation Energoatom.

The only commitment that, until now, has been respected is the physical integrity of the installations, despite the bombings that Russia carried out on its testing zone to take it eight days after the start of its invasion, generating a fire which, according to Ukraine, caused several deaths among its employees. After taking over this infrastructure, Ukraine put in place a crisis plan in the event of an atomic accident which would involve the compulsory evacuation of 300,000 people in the regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Mikolaiv, and periodically organizes exercises in the zone.

Follow all international news on Facebook And Xor in our weekly newsletter.

_