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Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba, has insisted that Russia must immediately withdraw forces from Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) to avert a disaster in Europe.
Kuleba gave the warning today after meeting with the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi,
in Turkey to discuss ways of ensuring safety and security of nuclear facilities in Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion.
The Minister tweeted: “The only electrical grid supplying the Chornobyl NPP and all its nuclear facilities occupied by Russian army is damaged. CNPP lost all electric supply. I call on the international community to urgently demand Russia to cease fire and allow repair units to restore power supply.
“Reserve diesel generators have a 48-hour capacity to power the Chornobyl NPP. After that, cooling systems of the storage facility for spent nuclear fuel will stop, making radiation leaks imminent. Putin’s barbaric war puts entire Europe in danger. He must stop it immediately!”
Grossi also expressed deep concern about this development as the “secure off-site power supply from the grid for all nuclear sites” was one of seven indispensable pillars of nuclear safety and security that he outlined at a meeting of the IAEA’s Board of Governors on 2nd March, convened to address the safety, security and safeguards implications of the situation in Ukraine.
“In the case of the Chornobyl NPP, the IAEA agreed with the Ukrainian regulator that its disconnection from the grid would not have a critical impact on essential safety functions at the site, where various radioactive waste management facilities are located, ” he said.
The Director-General explained that the volume of cooling water in the pool is sufficient to maintain effective heat removal from the spent fuel without a supply of electricity, and that the site also has reserve emergency power supplies with diesel generators and batteries.
Grossi however, added: “From day to day, we are seeing a worsening situation at the Chornobyl NPP, especially for radiation safety, and for the staff managing the facility under extremely difficult and challenging circumstances.
“I repeat my urgent appeal to the forces in effective control of the plant to respect internal radiation protection procedures, to facilitate the safe rotation of staff and to take other important steps to ensure safety.”
In another development, he said the IAEA in recent days had lost remote data transmission from its safeguards systems installed to monitor nuclear material at the Chornobyl NPP and another Ukrainian nuclear power plant now controlled by Russian forces, the Zaporizhzhya NPP.
Grossi said he was concerned about the sudden interruption of such data flows to the IAEA’s Vienna headquarters from the two sites, where large amounts of nuclear material are present in the form of spent or fresh nuclear fuel and other types of nuclear material.
The reason for the disruption in the transmission of safeguards data was not immediately clear, but the IAEA says it continues to receive such data from other nuclear facilities in Ukraine, including the three other nuclear power plants.
“The remote transmission of data from IAEA safeguards equipment located at nuclear sites around the world is an important component of our safeguards implementation, in Ukraine and globally,” he noted.
Regarding the status of Ukraine’s operational nuclear power plants, the regulator said eight of the country’s 15 reactors remained operating, including two at the Zaporizhzhya NPP. Radiation levels at the sites were normal, it said.
The Zaporizhzhya NPP site has four high voltage (750 kV) offsite power lines plus an additional one on standby. The operator informed the IAEA that two have been damaged and therefore there were now two power lines, plus the one on standby, available to the plant.
The operator also said that the NPP off-site power needs could be provided with one power line available. Furthermore, diesel generators are ready and functional to provide back-up power.