After weeks of shelling, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant temporarily lost power today for the first time ever.” And in the middle of a war zone, Ukraine does not have easy access to diesel fuel.Įdited News Clips “Shelling around a key nuclear plant in Ukraine is drawing international concern.” “And now Ukraine’s top nuclear official is raising fears that Russian trucks which have been parked inside the plant’s turbine hall, could be laden with explosives or cause an accidental fire.” “Fears are growing over a potential nuclear disaster. Jon Wolfsthal The problem is those generators are not like your car engines that are designed to start and stop repeatedly over time. Transcript lightly edited for clarity What is Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP)? This includes the global impact of a nuclear meltdown at Zaporizhzhia.Īpple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Podcast Addict | Stitcher | Radio Public We then discuss what a catastrophic event at the power plant may look like. We kick off by discussing how Zaporizhzhia operates in normal circumstances and how the fighting may have impacted current plant operations. In this episode, we are joined by Jon Wolfsthal, senior advisor at Global Zero and a member of board of Science and Security at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In recent weeks, fighting around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power plant has intensified, causing some damage to the plant and raising the prospect that in the context of armed conflict, a catastrophic nuclear accident becomes a very real possibility. In March, Russian forces captured the plant and a crew of Ukrainians are maintaining operations at the plant - effectively at gun point. Unlike Chernobyl, its design does not use graphite, the material that caught fire in the 1986 incident and spread radioactive material into the atmosphere.The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine is Europe’s largest. The Zaporizhzhia plant's reactors are housed inside stainless steel containment vessels, which themselves are placed inside walls of thick, reinforced concrete. The training for Ukrainian emergency workers this weekend involved treating people who might be affected by an emergency at the facility. And de Bretton-Gordon said its far more sturdy design, aimed at withstanding being hit by a jetliner, means the risk would come only from a blast inside the facility itself.īut other experts have said that fundamental differences between the design of two plants means that the risk of widespread radiation contamination is low regardless. Zaporizhzhia is more modern than Chernobyl, built in the early 1980s, around 10 years after construction of its infamous cousin began. “You’re not going to get a nuclear explosion, but the fires potentially created could spread contamination, as happened at Chernobyl.” “If you blow up nuclear fuel, you’re going to get contamination,” said Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the former commander of Britain's and NATO’s chemical, biological and nuclear defense forces. “No one can stand aside as radiation affects everyone.” “It is the responsibility of everyone in the world to stop it,” he said, in his latest appeal for more assistance from allies. But rarely have these warnings been as specific as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was late Tuesday, when he said Russia had placed “objects resembling explosives” on the roof - perhaps intending to blame an attack on Ukraine. Ukraine has warned for months that Russia might try to blow up the nuclear plant. “Even if you try to blow it up, I don’t think you could spread” the radiation beyond a few hundred yards. “It is actually quite difficult to arrange a significant reactive incident here,” said Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva. But some experts told NBC News that the risk of a widespread radiation leak was low. The increasingly drastic warnings have fueled rising concern among residents in southeastern Ukraine and beyond - not least given the destruction of the huge dam that had previously been a source of similar alarm and accusations.
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