A Ukrainian Nuclear Plant Is Now A War Zone. Here’s What That Means.

  • Science
  • Ukraine
  • A Ukrainian Nuclear Plant Is Now A War Zone. Here’s What That Means.

    “We are in completely uncharted waters,” the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said.

    by Dan Verganoby Dan Vergano, Peter Aldhousby Peter AldhousUpdated 17 hours agoPosted 21 hours ago { "id": 128869845 } A man in a suit points to a satellite image projected onto a wall Joe Klamar / AFP via Getty Images

    Rafael Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

    { "id": 128869800 }

    Fears of a major nuclear reactor disaster in the middle of the war in Ukraine took on a frightening possibility on early Friday.

    With the world riveted to security camera views of a fire, and fighting, at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, fears of damage to the reactors ricocheted around the globe. Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that a disaster there “will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl!" By morning, the fire was extinguished, Russian forces had taken control of the plant, and its safety equipment was stable, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. No radiation releases were reported from the facility. But the fear remains.

    “We are in completely uncharted waters,” said Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in a Friday news briefing. “The physical integrity of the plant has been compromised with what happened last night,” Grossi said. “We, of course, are fortunate that there was no release of radiation and that the integrity of the reactors in themselves was not compromised.”

    Grossi also offered to personally travel to Chornobyl (often transliterated from Russian as "Chernobyl"), the 1986 site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, to work out safeguards for the nuclear power facilities in the war-torn nation.

    In the US, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm activated the agency’s Nuclear Incident Response Team, and said the US Department of Defense and other agencies are closely monitoring radiation levels reported from the plant. She later expressed support for the IAEA’s calls to allow Ukrainian operators to continue working at Russian-captured nuclear facilities. The Energy Department team monitored instruments near the plant with IAEA and Ukrainian officials, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Gordon Trowbridge, allowing them to report no leaks.

    { "id": "1499810554772262913", "params": { "conversation": "none" } } Secretary Jennifer Granholm @SecGranholm

    UPDATE: Russian forces are in control of the Zaphorizhizia nuclear plant, and we call on Russia to allow the Ukrainian operators to continue to operate safely – including allowing shift changes at both Zaphorizhizia and Chornobyl. 1/

    06:14 PM - 04 Mar 2022 Reply Retweet Favorite Twitter: @SecGranholm { "id": 128869800 }

    Although nuclear reactors are heavily shielded, nuclear safety experts expressed serious concerns to BuzzFeed News about threats to these facilities during the war. Rather than a disaster on the scale of the 1986 Chornobyl meltdown, they warned of the potential for disasters more similar to 2011’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. There, reactor cooling lost in a tsunami led to partial reactor meltdowns, explosions near spent fuel pools, and venting of radioactive gas. A 19-mile radius evacuation zone was created around the facility.

    “Everyone has this mental picture of a tank shell hitting a reactor. But the real concern is cooling being lost,” said Cheryl Rofer, a retired Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear chemist. “Obviously, there is war going on, which is horrible already, but having a war next to a nuclear reactor is not a good idea.”

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    Originally posted on: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/ukrainian-nuclear-plant-russia-war-zone