Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian control since the start of the war, is about 150 kilometers northeast of the damaged dam on the reservoir’s south bank.
(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
Berlin Damage to the Kakhovka Dam in southern Ukraine has exacerbated the precarious position of the nearby Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has issued a warning. As the group explained in late May, the situation was “extremely fragile and dangerous” even before the dam burst.
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi declared that the dam’s own rupture “does not presently pose any immediate threat to the safety of the power plant”. There is no risk of flooding because the power plant is located on the channel above the dam and the water flows southwest across the Dnieper River into the Black Sea. However, the supply of cooling water must be permanently guaranteed. So far, that’s from the reservoir, which is now dropping relentlessly.
At 8am on Tuesday, the water level was still at 16.40 metres, but was dropping by about 5 centimeters per hour, or 1.20 meters per day, according to the IAEA. Once the water level falls below 12.70 meters, it is no longer possible to pump water into the nuclear power plant.
Grossi said, however, that the tanks located directly at the power plant (fed by the reservoir) are very large and should, if in doubt, be kept cool for several months. But it is important that this tank remains intact under all conditions. He appealed to Kiev and Moscow: “Nothing must happen that could endanger his integrity.”
Nuclear power plant had to run seven times with diesel generators
Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian control since the start of the war, is about 150 kilometers northeast of the damaged dam on the reservoir’s south bank. Like the Occidental Community, the IAEA has repeatedly urged an end to hostilities around nuclear plants to avoid the risk of damage and fallout.
The last of the plant’s six reactors was shut down last September. However, that doesn’t mean they are no longer a threat. After all, reactors that have been shut down also need to cool down for several years in “late operation”. It’s the only way to prevent a core meltdown and release of radioactive material, such as the one that led to the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Ukrainian nuclear energy company Enerhoatom also believes that the damage to the dam did not pose a serious threat to the operation of the nuclear power plant. “We don’t think the situation is critical because Zaporizhia NPP has its own cooling pond, which is not connected to the Kakhovka reservoir,” Enerhoatom director Petro Kotin said in a television interview.
Cooling water is used not only for the reactor itself, but also to cool the diesel generators in an emergency. It was not immediately clear whether power to the nuclear power plant remained intact or was disrupted by damage to the hydroelectric power plant at the reservoir. Neither the IAEA nor the German authorities provided any information in this regard.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the power plant and its cooling system had to be run on emergency diesel generators seven times due to previous failures of the external power supply. These usually represent “the last line of defense against a nuclear accident,” Grossi said – the last in the second half of May.
Dam breaks: Schultz talks ‘new dimension’ of war
“We’ve been very lucky that there hasn’t been a nuclear accident so far,” Grossi said a week ago — and he doesn’t know how bad things will now get. “It’s a dice game, and if it keeps going like this, one day our luck will run out.”
He announced that Grossi now really wants to start his planned inspection tour of the nuclear power plant next week. Since September, some of its experts have been permanently stationed in Zaporozhye as neutral technical observers.
more: Since the start of the war there have been fears of a nuclear apocalypse in Zaporozhye