Ukraine warned Wednesday that a power line to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant cut during the aftermath of Russia’s capture of the facility on February 24 could lead to a radiation leak.
Because of the fighting around the plant, which is now controlled by Russia, Ukrainian personnel have been unable to gain access to fix the high-voltage power line.
The state-run company that operates all of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, Energoatom, said radioactive substances could be released into the environment due to the power outage.
Without power, the 20,000 spent-fuel assemblies stored there could overheat if the coolant evaporates. In addition, ventilation systems at the plant may also not be working, exposing staff to dangerous doses of radiation, the company added.
Reserve diesel generators can power the plant for up to 48 hours, according to a tweet by Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who called on the international community to “urgently demand Russia to cease fire and allow repair units to restore power supply.”
Reserve diesel generators have a 48-hour capacity to power the Chornobyl NPP. After that, cooling systems of the storage facility for spent nuclear fuel will stop, making radiation leaks imminent. Putin’s barbaric war puts entire Europe in danger. He must stop it immediately! 2/2
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 9, 2022
After 48 hours, “evaporation will occur that will lead to nuclear discharge,” the Ukraine government warned. “The wind can transfer the radioactive cloud to other regions of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Europe. People at Chernobyl are at risk of receiving a dangerous dose of radiation.”
IAEA: No Critical Impact
Rafael Grossi, director-general of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Wednesday in a tweet that the IAEA “sees no critical impact on safety,” assessing that the available cooling pool was sufficient to manage the heat without the need for electricity.
However, one day earlier, the IAEA had warned that the systems monitoring nuclear material at the plant’s radioactive waste facilities have stopped transmitting data.
“The Director General . . . indicated that remote data transmission from safeguards monitoring systems installed at the Chernobyl NPP had been lost,” the IAEA said in a statement reported by Reuters.
1986: Worst Nuclear Disaster in the World
The Chernobyl plant, captured by Russian forces last month, was the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986, when the No. 4 reactor at the site exploded.
At least 2,000 people died in the disaster. Some 47,000 residents of nearby Pripyat – built in the 1970s to house workers at the plant and their families — were permanently evacuated from their homes in 1,200 buses and 200 trucks. Today Pripyat is a ghost town, although until the current war, tourists visited on specially organized tours from Kiev.
Numerous other villages and cities were evacuated as well.
There are still spots where high radiation levels remain, however, making the area uninhabitable for the next few thousand years.
The radioactive cloud reached as far as Poland, Germany and Sweden.
A “Safe Confinement” dome was built to cover the destroyed reactor and prevent further leaks of radiation from the site.
The plant has been “fully disconnected from the power grid,” according to the country’s national energy operator, Ukrenergo, which said in a Facebook post military operations around the plant left “no possibility to restore the [power] lines.”
