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“But in a war, all of these different failures that would have to happen for a reactor to become damaged and meltdown - the likelihood of all of those happening becomes much more likely than it does in peacetime.”
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“Under normal circumstances, the likelihood of a reactor losing power and of the emergency diesel generators being damaged and of not being repaired adequately quickly is very, very small,” Acton said.
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James Acton, the co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the simple key to keeping the facilities safe was to immediately end any military operations around them. “The two incidents highlight the risk that facilities with radioactive material may suffer damage during the armed conflict, with potentially severe consequences,” he said. Grossi earlier this week appealed to Russia to let the Chernobyl staff “do their job safely and effectively.”ĭuring fighting on the weekend, Russian fire also hit a radioactive waste disposal facility in Kyiv and a similar facility in Kharkiv.īoth contained low-level waste such as those produced through medical use, and no radioactive release has been reported, but Grossi said the incidents should serve as a warning. In an appeal to the IAEA for help earlier this week, Ukrainian officials said that Chernobyl staff have been held by the Russian military without rotation and are exhausted. The loss of off-site power could force the plant to rely on emergency diesel generators, which are highly unreliable and could fail or run out of fuel, causing a station blackout that would stop the water circulation needed to cool the spent fuel pool, he said.Ī file picture taken on Apshows the giant protective dome built over the sarcophagus covering the destroyed fourth reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (Sergei Supinsky / AFP) Perhaps the biggest issue, however, is the plant’s power supply, said Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California who has studied both the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, raising a concern also voiced by Wolfsthal and others. “We don’t want our nuclear power plants to come under assault, to be on fire, and to not have first responders be able to access them,” he said.Īnother danger at nuclear facilities are the pools where spent fuel rods are kept to be cooled, which are more vulnerable to shelling and which could cause the release of radioactive material. The reactors at the plant have thick concrete containment domes, which would have protected them from external fire from tanks and artillery, said Jon Wolfsthal, who served during the Obama administration as the senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the National Security Council.Īt the same time, a fire at a nuclear power plant is never a good thing, he said. Four of the other six reactors have now been taken offline, leaving only one in operation.
#Big reactor meltdown Offline#
The reactor that was hit was offline but still contains highly radioactive nuclear fuel. (Photo by DENIS LOVROVIC / AFP) What could have happened? An employee works in a pharmacy next to a sign reading “We don’t have iodine tablets” in Zagreb, March 3, 2022, after residents bought all the iodine in pharmacies following the Russian president’s speech on nuclear weapons.