“Nuclear terrorism”: this is how President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky qualified on Friday the events that took place at night at the site of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in the southeast of the country. “We warn everyone that no country other than Russia has ever fired on nuclear power plants. This is the first time in our history, the first time in the history of mankind. This terrorist state is now resorting to nuclear terror,” he said in a video posted online. Ukraine has fifteen nuclear reactors. If there is an explosion, that is the end of everything. End of Europe. This is the evacuation of Europe.” Russia, for its part, blamed the “Ukrainian nationalist” saboteurs, calling the attack a “monstrous provocation.”
What happened ? After a night of clashes, this almost 6,000 megawatt power plant (the largest in Europe), located in Energodar, southwest of Zaporozhye, on the Dnieper, fell into Russian hands. According to Ukrainian authorities, shots from Russian tanks caused a fire (which has already been extinguished) in a laboratory and a building intended for training. According to information provided by the Ukrainian authorities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the safety system of the plant’s six reactors was not damaged and no radioactive material was released.
Filmed events
Thanks to a camera placed in one of the plant’s buildings, most of the clashes at the site were broadcast live. Thus, a recording published on YouTube lasting just under four hours allows us to trace the evolution of the attack.
The pillar seen in the first part of the video is located on the edge of Promyshlennaya Street, which provides access to the complex from the city of Energodar. The camera – of mediocre quality – filmed this road from a building, probably an administrative building, located in the very center of the complex. The area located next to the reactors, which are on the left side of the frame.
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In the pictures, we find in the dark what turns out to be a convoy of cars, a priori Russian, advancing along this main road. Gunfights take place from the first minutes of broadcast, around 23:30 local time (22:30 in France), according to the episode’s timestamp. We have to wait another hour and the advance of the convoy (which we observe thanks to the headlights) for the clashes to intensify.
Then, in the pixelated video, we see the vehicles being fired upon from the right, the sparks of the shells hitting or ricocheting into their armor illuminating the parking lot. As the tanks advance, we see how they are firing at the buildings to the right of the road, that is, in the direction opposite to the reactors. There is a fire, the flame is visible from 1:19 (Ukrainian time). A few hours later we recognize the fire truck that came to fight them.
The topology of the buildings, the adjoining car park and the lawns separating them make it possible to determine which part of the nuclear power plant was attacked. The fire, which is visible on the right in the pictures, broke out about 500 meters from the first reactor, in a building listed on Google as a “training center for personnel training.”
Asked by Le Monde, Petr Kotin, head of Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear energy company Energoatom, said three people had died in the clashes. The leader also claims that “the Russians bombed the entire factory area” and that “the building intended for training was completely destroyed.” However, this is not visible in the four-hour video posted online, nor in the photographs taken the next day. If a building appears to be the target of numerous shots and the target of several fires, it does not appear to be “completely destroyed”.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/liberation/JCWEVLYIS5DHTBQC6D5QU5NMSM.png "What happened at the Zaporozhye nuclear test site? 2")
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/liberation/63SIPD6EORB3BM63KTTE64NOEA.png "What happened at the Zaporozhye nuclear test site? 3")
Russians are present in the region the day before
The arrival of this column was predictable. Earlier Thursday, according to AFP, Ukraine told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Russian tanks and infantry were stationed near the town of Energodar, a few kilometers from the nuclear power plant.
According to some media reports, a few days ago, residents built barricades at the southern entrance to Energodar to futilely prevent Russian troops from advancing towards the nuclear infrastructure.
Even more incredible courage from every day of the citizens of Ukraine. The road to the city of Energodar, where the largest nuclear power plant in Europe is located, is blocked by traffic and people. pic.twitter.com/M2AmFhLZtX
— Kyle Glen (@KyleJGlen) March 2, 2022
On Thursday afternoon, pro-Ukrainian groups shared a photo of a convoy of Russian vehicles, including armored vehicles and tanks. The first post we found is dated 18:45 French time, which matches other posts about Russians arriving at the city gates. CheckNews accurately geolocated this photo about a hundred meters from a dam built by residents on the P37 road.
In another episode posted a little earlier and also geolocated by CheckNews a little further north, on the same P37 road, we see civilians working on the dam, burning tires to try and stop the Russian advance.
To what extent could this place have been endangered by the bombings?
One of the four sets of reactors of the Ukrainian nuclear fleet is located at the site in Zaporozhye. It is the largest of these plants with six reactors with a total capacity of 5700 MW. Energoatom, Ukraine’s national nuclear generating company, said that currently “only the fourth reactor remains in operation”, indicating that it is “at the maximum distance from the zone of night shelling.” The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has stated that this reactor is now operating at 60% of its capacity.
According to Energoatom, the shutdown of the 2nd and 3rd power units was started at night “due to the high risk of damage to nuclear installations.” The IAEA clarifies that before the attack, the first reactor had already been shut down for maintenance, and reactors 5 and 6 were operating at low power.
Could the bombing of the facility lead to a nuclear accident? Were automatic deactivation devices in operation?
The plant’s reactors are of the pressurized water type VVER, originally developed in the Soviet Union. As the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) explains, their principle of operation is “close to that of Western pressurized water reactors”: a water circuit heated by nuclear fission heats a second independent circuit that rotates turbines.
The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, VVER-1000/230, is housed in a prestressed concrete containment (as are almost all reactors in Ukraine), which, according to a report by the Austrian Federal “.
But studies dating back to the early 1990s showed that other parts of such plants were more vulnerable, with the risk of rupture of water and steam pipes or failure of safety devices. However, modernization work was carried out during the 2000s, then in 2013, after the Fukushima accident, preventing these reactors from reaching the level of safety seen in other facilities in the European fleet.
However, Ukrainian VVER-1000/320 sites will have significant safety features. “In the event of an anomaly in the reactors — for example, if the power, temperature or pressure exceeds a certain threshold — the system will automatically begin to stop the nuclear chain reaction,” explains Karin Herviu from IRSN. These stations have emergency generators with enough fuel to keep the core cool for at least a week, leaving time to intervene or refuel the facility in the long run. It is also noted that “on the Ukrainian VVER-1000 cooling circuits are present in triplicate for each reactor. They also have four emergency generators for each reactor, one of which is a bunker.”
According to Uwe Stoll, technical and scientific director of the German Society for the Safety of Nuclear Installations and Reactors (GRS), “In this type of reactor, the pool that allows the spent nuclear fuel to be cooled is located inside the containment building and is protected in the same way as the reactor.”
Could the reactors be put out of action in the event of shelling of the hull?
In addition to anomaly detection devices inside the reactors, some of the European fleet’s power plants have installed vibration sensors – seismic – that are starting to stop their operation. Are there such sensors in Zaporozhye? Could they work if a projectile hit the site? Uwe Stoll considers it likely that this plant has it. Roman Lagodynsky, a researcher at the Institute for Safety and Risk Sciences in Vienna, is more skeptical: “The old Soviet VVER reactors are considered to be located in areas not exposed to seismic hazard.” However, he notes that in previous decades, Zaporozhye has been upgraded to meet certain seismic standards. The researcher, however, wonders about the difference in signal between an earthquake and an artillery shot (in particular, about the source of vibration), as well as the ability to trigger such detectors in these very specific circumstances.
Finally, it should be noted that in the event of a prolonged attack on a nuclear site, there is another risk that should not be overlooked: plant personnel will not be able to arrive at the site for maintenance.
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