Dam water continues to cool the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant
The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine continues to pump water from the Kakhovka dam to cool the fuel and avoid an accident, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Thursday.
After testing, it turned out that the pumping operation “could continue even if the level falls below the limit value of 12.70 meters, which was previously considered critical,” said the UN committee in a press release, which now extends the limit value to “11 “ specifies meters or even less”.
“Under these difficult circumstances, this gives us a little more time before we possibly switch to other sources of supply,” assured the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, who will be on site next week.
When the dam becomes inoperable, the power plant has “a nearby large detention pond, as well as smaller on-site reserves and wells that can supply cooling water for several months.” “It is important that this basin remains intact. “Nothing should be done to undermine its integrity,” Mr Grossi warned earlier this week during a meeting of the agency’s board of governors in Vienna.
The situation remains “very precarious and potentially dangerous,” he emphasized on Thursday. It is necessary to constantly cool the fuel in the reactor cores as well as in the storage pools in order to avoid an accident due to core meltdown and radioactive releases into the environment.
Staff have already implemented measures to limit water consumption and now only use it for “essential nuclear safety-related activities.” The IAEA, which has a team of experts on site, requested access to the location where the water level in the tank is measured “so that it can conduct independent verification”.