Those concerns were quickly downplayed by experts, who warned against comparisons with the Chernobyl plant, where the world’s worst nuclear disaster occurred in 1986.
He said that modern plants are much safer than older plants like Chernobyl. But analysts nonetheless expressed fear that Russia’s violent invasion of Ukraine may have spread to nuclear facilities, a development with some recent parallels.
And the site’s operator and regulator has reported that the situation on the ground is “extremely tense and challenging”, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Facebook post, “No country has ever fired at nuclear power plant reactors except Russia. For the first time, for the first time in history.”
The IAEA called for fighting to end the facility, and world leaders were quick to criticize Russia’s move.
IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said what happens next in Zaporizhia is “a situation that is very difficult to maintain, very delicate” while an active military operation and Russian forces are under control. “It’s unprecedented,” he said. “Water completely uncontaminated.”
What happened at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant?
Reports of an attack on the facility emerged on Friday morning, with video of the scene showing gunfire at the Zaporizhzhya plant before dawn.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba tweeted: “Russian military firing from all sides at Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.”
According to Grossi, a large number of Russian tanks and infantry “broke through the block-post” as far as Enerhodar, a few kilometers from the Zaporizhzhya Power Plant.
The IAEA chief said a Russian projectile then struck a building within the site of the plant, causing a local fire, but no reactors were nearby and they were unaffected.
In a Facebook post early Friday, Zelensky accused Russian soldiers of launching a “terrorist attack” by deliberately firing at the power plant – potentially putting millions of lives at risk.
“Russian tanks armed with thermal imagery are shooting at nuclear blocks. They know what they are shooting at. They are preparing for this (attack),” Zelensky said in the post. Power station safe.”
In a statement Friday morning local time, the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate (SNRI) confirmed that the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine is being held by Russian military forces, but officials said they were in contact with plant management.
SNRI said in its statement that six reactors of the power plant are intact, although the ancillary buildings for reactor unit 1 have been damaged. The remaining four units are being cooled while one unit is providing electricity, the statement said.
Separately, Ukraine’s nuclear power operator, Energotom, said “the administrative building and the post at the station are under occupier control.” It said that employees are working on the power units to ensure stable operation.
How dangerous was the attack?
Ukrainian authorities immediately sounded the alarm about the possible effects of the attack. Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said that “if (the plant) blew up, it would be 10 times bigger than Chernobyl,” and Zelensky said such an event would mean “the end of Europe”.
But experts insisted they did not believe a reactor could blow up, pointing to fundamental differences between the Chernobyl and the Zaporizhzhya plant.
The IAEA said Ukrainian officials reported that background radiation levels were normal and that “essential” equipment was not affected by the fire. Plant spokesman Andrey Tuz told CNN on Friday that there was no serious damage to the plant in the attack.
“The design is very different from the Chernobyl reactor, which did not have a control building, and therefore poses no real risk, in my opinion, with the reactors now safely shut down at the plant,” said Mark Weinman, a reader at Imperial College. In Nuclear Materials in London, told the Science Media Center (SMC).
The Chernobyl disaster occurred at a plant that used Soviet-era, graphite-powered RBMK reactors. But the Zaporizhzhia facility uses a pressurized water reactor known as the VVER model.
“The design of the VVER is inherently safer and more secure than the Chernobyl RBMK system,” John Wolfstall, a senior adviser at Global Zero and former senior director for arms control and non-proliferation at the National Security Council, told Twitter on Friday.
Malcolm Grimston, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Imperial Center for Energy Policy and Technology in London, told SMC that a VVER reactor “cannot get away with itself” as the RBMK can.
How safe are modern nuclear facilities?
Differences in design and safety standards mean that the potential for an on-site nuclear reactor to explode and cause a disaster is nothing nuclear experts concern.
He noted that the danger would be somewhat greater if a nuclear reactor were to come under targeted, sustained attack with the intention of causing a nuclear incident, which was not the case in Zaporizhzhya and made sense given the proximity of major Russian cities. Will not done. For all plants in Ukraine.
Robin Grimes, professor of materials physics at Imperial College London, told SMC, the pressure vessel of a modern reactor “is very strong and can withstand considerable damage from earthquakes and to a lesser extent kinetic impacts.”
“It is not designed to withstand attacks from explosive weapons”, he said. “It seems to me that such an impact would not result in a nuclear event like Chernobyl (but) it has never been tested and is not impossible.”
“It is therefore shocking and reckless to the extent that shells were fired near a nuclear plant,” he said. “Even though they weren’t aiming for a nuclear plant, wartime artillery is notoriously inaccurate.”
How many nuclear plants are there in Ukraine?
Ukraine is heavily dependent on nuclear power. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Zaporizhzhia plant contains six of the country’s 15 nuclear power reactors, and according to Ukraine’s nuclear power operator Energoatom, the facility accounts for a fifth of the average annual electricity generation in Ukraine alone. ,
This makes its seizure by the Russian army extremely important; If the plant stops running, it will seriously affect the energy supply to millions of Ukrainians.
Altogether there are four nuclear plants in Ukraine – two, including Zaporizhzhya in the south of the country, and two more in the northwest, areas not occupied by Russian troops.
These do not include the closed Chernobyl plant in the north of the country, which was captured by Russian forces on the first day of the invasion of Ukraine. According to the adviser to the President of Ukraine, Mykhailo Podolik, control of the Chernobyl area was lost after “fierce fighting”.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, Oksana Markova, said more than 90 members of the Chernobyl power plant’s operations personnel were taken hostage by the Russian military.
The Chernobyl plant was closed after the 1986 disaster, and has since sat in an exclusion zone, but construction and recovery efforts continue at the site to reduce the risk of future radiation leaks.