A third incident involving a nuclear power plant was registered on Tuesday in Ukraine. Should we be afraid of a major disaster?
Chernobyl, Zaporozhye, and now Kharkiv… On Tuesday, as the war in Ukraine is now in its 13th day, the Interfax news agency confirmed the country’s third nuclear power incident.
After storming the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the greatest nuclear disaster of the 20th century, then bombing Europe’s largest power plant in Zaporozhye, the Russian army attacked an experimental nuclear facility in Kharkov.
Even if the authorities are reassuring until then, according to the Interfax news agency, “the destruction of a nuclear facility and storage of nuclear materials could lead to a massive environmental disaster.”
What are the real risks of these bombings? Are the Russians playing on the nerves of the West by attacking nuclear facilities? An article published on the scientific site Nature assesses the risk of these very high symbolic targets.
Anti-missile nuclear reactors?
According to Nature, “Zaporozhye reactors are of modern design. Unlike the Chernobyl reactor, each of them is enclosed in a steel pressure vessel, which, in turn, is placed inside a massive reinforced concrete protective structure.”
In addition, “the stations also have a number of backup safety systems,” says Michael Black, director of the Center for Nuclear Engineering at Imperial College London. Catastrophic damage from a missile strike is unlikely. “If the rocket goes astray, there is nothing to worry about. These are very strong structures, ”Michael Buck continues to point out.
Even in Chernobyl, the risk seems limited. “The hazardous material it contains is located in the basement of the reactor building, protected by the remains of this building and the many tons of concrete that were poured on top of it,” retired nuclear scientist Cheryl Rofer writes on her blog. Molten fuel containing uranium and plutonium seems to be out of reach.
Spent fuel ponds pose a real danger… including for Russia
If nuclear reactors seem safe to attack, what worries the scientific community is the pools that store spent fuel while it cools. Damage to these installations can start a fire, the fumes of which can be extremely dangerous to the population living nearby … but also to those further away. And the scientists remind then… that “the Russians must keep in mind that the prevailing winds will carry a dangerous cloud… towards Russia.”
New Fukushima?
However, faced with the threat of attack, the temptation to stop the power plants could be great. So, in Zaporozhye, five out of six reactors have been shut down in recent days. Here again the consequences could not be insignificant. “The core of a reactor that has just been shut down must be actively cooled, which requires energy, usually taken from the grid. Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan when power was cut off after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
A dramatic event that could also happen if the systems providing this much-needed cooling are damaged. And these elements are outside the containment of the reactor. Therefore, they are more vulnerable to missile attacks…