“We are playing with fire and something very, very catastrophic could happen,” warned Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN Security Council, days after an inspection visit to the plant. In a detailed report on his visit, the IAEA said shelling around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant must stop immediately. “This requires agreement by all parties concerned to establish a nuclear safety and protection zone” around the plant, it said.
UN chief wants demilitarized zone
At the Security Council meeting, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also asked Russian and Ukrainian forces to commit to ending all military activity around the plant and agree to a “demilitarized perimeter”. Guterres said this would include “a commitment by Russian forces to withdraw all military personnel and equipment from that perimeter and a commitment by Ukrainian forces not to enter it.” Asked by reporters about the creation of a demilitarized zone, Russia’s UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzia said the proposal was “not serious.” “The Ukrainians will immediately intervene and destroy the whole thing. We are defending, protecting the station,” he said. “Indeed it is not militarized. There is no equipment at the station.” He said the only Russians there are guarding the factory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the IAEA report. In his nightly address to the nation, Zelensky praised the report’s “clear references” to the presence of Russian troops and military equipment at the plant. He also called for a stronger mandate for the IAEA and urged the agency to explicitly back Kiev’s long-standing claim that Russian forces should withdraw from the facility and its environs. A Russian soldier guards an area of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in territory under Russian military control, southeastern Ukraine, May 1, 2022. (The Associated Press)
Factory staff under constant pressure, pressure
Bombing continued around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant on Tuesday, a day after Ukraine’s power grid was evacuated again, leaving it in the precarious position of relying on its own power to operate its safety systems. The plant normally relies on external power to run critical cooling systems that keep its reactors and spent fuel from overheating. Loss of these cooling systems could lead to a meltdown or other release of radiation. “For radiation protection professionals, for the Ukrainian and even the Russian people, and for those in central Europe, this is a very worrying time – and that’s an understatement,” said Paul Dorfman, a nuclear safety expert at the University of Sussex. in England. Officials based in Russia accused Ukrainian forces of shelling Enerhodar, the town where the plant is located, while Ukrainians said Kremlin forces attacked the town of Nikopol. The blast left the town of 53,000 without power and water. World leaders have called for the demilitarization of the plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces since the early days of the war but is run by Ukrainian engineers. The IAEA noted that on several occasions, the plant lost, in whole or in part, its power supply outside the site due to military activity in the area. The UN agency said a backup power line would have to be restored and called for an end to “all military activities likely to affect power supply systems.” In addition, the IAEA warned that the team operating the plant is “under constant high pressure and stress, especially with the limited personnel available” — a situation that could “lead to increased human error with implications for nuclear safety.” Members of the IAEA walk during an inspection of the Zaporizhia nuclear plant in Enerhodar on Thursday. Ukrainian intelligence services reported that residents of Enerhodar were fleeing the town out of fear. (The Press Service of the Russian Ministry of Defense via The Associated Press) The IAEA also said personnel must obtain permission from the Russian occupation forces to access the cooling ponds where the spent fuel is stored. Grossi expressed concern that this could hinder the response of personnel in an emergency. The report said the team saw Russian military personnel, vehicles and equipment at various locations, including several military trucks on the floor of two turbine rooms. Two inspectors from the IAEA mission remained at the plant, a decision welcomed by Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. “There are Russian troops now who don’t understand what’s going on, they don’t properly assess the risks,” Podolyak said. “There are a number of our workers there who need some kind of protection, people from the international community are standing by them and saying [Russian troops]: ‘Don’t touch these people, let them work.’ “ Ammunition on site at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant on Thursday. (Press Service of the Russian Ministry of Defense/The Associated Press)
“Any repair is impossible at this time”
On Monday, the IAEA said Ukrainian authorities said the factory’s last transmission line connecting it to the national electricity grid had been disconnected to allow workers to put out a fire caused by shelling. Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko told Ukrainian television: “Any repair is impossible at this point – there are ongoing hostilities around the plant.” Mycle Schneider, an independent analyst on nuclear power in Canada, said this means the plant was likely operating in “island mode,” or generating electricity only for its own operations. “Islanding is a very erratic, erratic and unreliable way of providing continuous power to a nuclear power plant,” Snyder said, noting that “many, if not most, attempts at islanding fail.” The Zaporizhzhia plant has emergency backup diesel generators to produce power to run the site if the external source is disrupted. But Schneider said the plant’s operators may have decided to switch to island mode first. If the plant turns to diesel generators as a last resort and they fail, the reactor and spent fuel could quickly overheat, he said. Experts say the reactors at Zaporizhzhia are designed to withstand natural disasters, even plane crashes, but unpredictable fighting has repeatedly threatened to disrupt cooling systems. Ukraine in 1986 was the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, the Chernobyl explosion. A room in a dilapidated school building in the deserted city of Pripyat, about three kilometers from the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, on April 5, 2017. Ukraine in 1986 was the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, the Chornobyl explosion. (Efrem Lukatsky/The Associated Press)
Residents leave the town where the nuclear plant is located
Ukrainian intelligence services reported that residents of Enerhodar were fleeing the town out of fear. “People are turning to us en masse for help. They are trying to leave the dangerous area, but there are no corridors,” Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told Ukrainian television. Meanwhile, gunfire and explosions were heard in the afternoon in the Russian-held city of Berdyansk in southeastern Ukraine, with Russian state media reporting that the car of the “city commander” installed in the Kremlin blew up. The RIA Novosti news agency reported that the official, Artem Bardin, was in serious condition and that the assassination attempt was followed by a shootout. In the southern region of Kherson, occupied by the Russians since the beginning of the war, Ukrainian forces continued their counterattack. A floating bridge was blown up overnight and a command center was hit, as well as two checkpoints, Ukrainian authorities said.
