KYIV, Ukraine – When Russian forces took control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in early March, a fierce firefight with Ukrainian troops sparked a fire that raised global alarm over the risks of a catastrophic radiation leak.
The fire was quickly extinguished. And although a Russian shell hit reactor No. 1, its thick walls protected it from damage, the Ukrainian government said at the time.
Now, five months later, repeated shelling at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant complex over the past seven days has raised new concerns, with Ukrainian and Western officials warning that the attacks increase the risk of a nuclear accident.
Each side blames the other for the factory explosions.
The Ukrainians have accused the Russians of leading strikes there to cut off energy supplies to other cities and to try to discredit the Ukrainian military in the eyes of the world. The Russians say Ukraine is carrying out the shelling.
Both sides would suffer if a meltdown occurred and radioactive material was dispersed.
Ukrainian officials have also expressed growing concern about working conditions at the facility. More than 10,000 Ukrainian workers are tasked with keeping the plant running safely, even as Russia has turned it into a military fortress and is involved in what Ukrainian officials say is a campaign of intimidation and intimidation.
Rafael M. Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at a UN Security Council meeting on Thursday that the world was facing a “serious hour” as plant safety deteriorated and called for a team of international experts. to access the installation immediately.
Mr Grossi said there was “no imminent threat” for the time being from the recent shelling, but warned the assessment “may change at any time”.
The United States has called for the creation of a demilitarized zone around the factory, but Russia has given no indication that it would even consider leaving the factory.
Speaking to a nation that still bears the scars of a nuclear disaster from the collapse of the Chernobyl facility in 1986, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said the Kremlin was engaged in “undisclosed nuclear blackmail” and called the situation in the factory “one of the greatest crimes of the terrorist state.”
As world officials warn of growing risk at the plant, here’s a look at the situation and its most pressing concerns.
The shelling continued into the past week.
The factory in Zaporizhzhya is located on the Dnipro River on the frontline of the war between Russia and Ukraine. The Ukrainian army controls the west bank, while the Russians entrenched themselves around the factory on the east bank of the river.
For weeks, Ukrainian officials say, Russian troops have been fortifying the factory’s exterior and using it as a staging area for attacks on Ukraine-controlled territory, calculating that Ukrainian forces will not fire back due to the risk of a wandering attack. Ukrainian officials said they usually don’t fire back, and when they do, it’s guided, like a drone.
On August 5, grenades hit the complex. The shelling continued into the past week.
According to a statement from Energoatom, the Ukrainian agency responsible for running all nuclear power plants in Ukraine, workers at the plant were forced to activate an emergency power unit after shelling on Thursday. It said the factory was now at risk of operating without proper fire safety standards due to damage to internal power systems.
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Another shelling ignited a fire in the area of the plant’s nitrogen-oxygen station, but it was extinguished.
At least one staff member working in the dry spent fuel storage area was injured in yet another shelling.
The most pressing concerns focus on the risk of a meltdown.
While they’re designed to withstand a range of risks — from a plane crashing into the facility to natural disasters — no working nuclear power plant has ever been in the midst of active combat, and it wasn’t designed with the threat of cruise missiles in mind.
There are a number of important concerns.
The concrete shell of the site’s six reactors provides strong protection, as was the case when reactor No. 1 was hit in March, officials say. More troubling is the chance of a transformer being hit by shelling, increasing the risk of fire.
Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of hiding dozens of military vehicles with an unknown amount of ammunition on the grounds of at least two reactors. If a fire broke out at the current transformers and the power grid was taken offline, it could cause a failure in the plant’s cooling system and lead to a catastrophic meltdown, said Edwin Lyman, a nuclear energy expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists. , a private group in Cambridge, Mass.
He noted that the loss of coolant during the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011 resulted in three reactors undergoing some degree of meltdown.
If the cooling is interrupted, said Dr. Lyman, the nuclear fuel can become hot enough to melt in a matter of hours. Eventually, it could melt through the steel reactor vessel and even the outer containment structure, releasing radioactive material.
According to Ukrainian officials, a grenade hit a current transformer in reactor No. 6 at the same time that reactor No. 1 was hit. According to Ukrainian officials, it did not explode.
dr. Lyman said the threat would diminish in the event of a military attack on the dry spent fuel deposit next to the Zaporizhzhya reactors. While spent fuel can still be dangerously hot for years, it quickly loses much of its radioactivity, making any breakthrough less threatening — though the radioactive particles would spread into the air if hit by a grenade or missile.
Employees are faced with difficult circumstances.
Russian soldiers detain workers and subject them to brutal interrogations in a search for possible saboteurs, prompting many workers to leave and worry about security, Ukrainian officials say.
“People are being kidnapped en masse,” Dmytro Orlov, the exiled mayor of the nearby town of Enerhodar, said during a meeting with Energoatom officials last month. “The whereabouts of some of them are unknown. The rest are in very difficult circumstances: they are tortured and physically and morally abused.”
A Ukrainian energy official who spoke about factory safety on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject said at least 100 staff members have been detained in recent weeks. Some who were released bear the scars of torture and 10 workers are still missing, the official said.
Those claims could not be independently confirmed.
Ukraine says Russia is using the nuclear power plant as a form of pressure.
Ukrainian officials have said that the Russians are using the plant as a form of nuclear blackmail and that they have shelled the facility to remind the world that they control what is happening there. The strikes, they claim, are being led by officials from Russia’s nuclear agency, Rosatom, who are on the scene and have so far aimed at hitting things not deemed essential to the plant’s safe operation, such as the sewage system. .
Russia may also disrupt power supply in Ukraine by cutting the flow of energy from the plant to the Ukrainian grid.
“The Russians understand that energy is a huge tool of power,” R. Scott Kemp, a professor of nuclear science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told DailyExpertNews when the Russians first took control of the plant. “It’s a point of tremendous leverage.”
How far radioactive material can spread during a meltdown depends on the circumstances.
Let’s imagine there has been a meltdown and radioactive material has spread from the factory.
Disaster scenarios with nuclear reactors are usually based on local conditions: how bad is the breach, is the groundwater flowing in a certain direction, is the wind blowing and if so, in what way and with what force over time, stable or variable?
In terms of power, the six reactors in Zaporizhzhya are about the same size as the Chernobyl reactor that suffered a meltdown in 1986 and explosions that destroyed the reactor building. In that case, the breach was extremely bad and the prevailing winds blew clouds of radioactive debris mainly into Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Smaller amounts were found in other parts of Europe.
dr. Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists said the effects of a meltdown, even if they are relatively small, could involve localized contamination, mass evacuations, business interruptions and many billions of dollars in cleaning costs.
William J. Broad and Anna Lukinova contributed reporting.
