This is the first time that a military conflict has taken place in a country with a large nuclear fleet. In Ukraine, the bombings and the recent fire near the Zaporijia site, where Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is located with its six 1,000 megawatt reactors, are fueling the fears of the international community and reviving the specter of a nuclear disaster.
While kyiv and Moscow, which has occupied the site since the beginning of the conflict, accuse each other of being behind these strikes, tensions peaked at the end of the week when the plant was found “completely disconnected” of the Ukrainian national grid due to damage to the power lines. While the Ukrainian operator assured the day before that the site’s security systems were operating normally, the Ukrainian national company Energoatom warned, on Saturday August 27, against the “leakage of hydrogen and spraying of radioactive substances”reporting on“high fire risk”.
In the meantime, repeated calls from the international community to set up a demilitarized zone around the plant in order to secure it and allow the dispatch of an international inspection mission have still not succeeded.
An essential power station for the power supply of belligerents
The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is located in southern Ukraine – on the territory of the city of Enerhodar – nearly 60 kilometers from the city of Zaporizhia and 525 kilometers from Chernobyl, another plant once occupied by the army. Russian. Fed by the waters of the Dnieper River, it is the most powerful nuclear power plant in Europe. With its six VVER-1000 nuclear reactors, it has a capacity of nearly 6,000 megawatts, enough energy to supply nearly four million homes with electricity. In peacetime, the Zaporizhia power plant produced more than a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity. It also supplies part of the territories occupied by Russia.
In addition to the Chernobyl power plant – at the origin of the biggest nuclear disaster in the world in 1986 and whose last reactor was shut down in 2000 – Ukraine has four other atomic sites: Rovno and Khmelnitsky in the northwest, Ukraine -south in the center of the country and Zaporizhia in the south-east.
A military objective taken hostage by the Russians in March
Russia seized the Zaporizhia nuclear site shortly after invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022, like the city of Energodar where it is located. The staff is however Ukrainian and was left in place by the Kremlin so that it continues to ensure the daily operation of the plant.
If the Russians need the plant to supply the territories they occupy, it is also used as a military shield by the occupying armies to guard against a Ukrainian counter-offensive. “After storming it on March 4, they immediately set up tanks and ammunition depots inside the plant, so as to ensure that no one would dare to fire. They feel comfortable there and take the population hostage.testified, in June, the mayor of Energodar, Dmitry Orlov.
Russia is also accused of wanting to cut Ukraine’s electricity supply by targeting high-voltage lines, in anticipation of a winter that promises to be harsh for the inhabitants. When the plant was off the grid after damage to the power lines caused by fires, Washington blamed Moscow, saying that “disconnect the central from the Ukrainian network to redirect [l’électricité] to the occupied regions [était] unacceptable”.
Who is responsible for the current bombardments?
The vagueness persists as to the origin of the shootings and bombardments which regularly fall on the site of the power station, the independent observers not having access to them. Strikes targeted the plant on March 4, when the site was stormed by the Russian army, which had fired shells at the infrastructure to neutralize a Ukrainian unit which provided security. On the Ukrainian side, a video broadcast on July 20 showed a drone attack targeting Russian soldiers posted inside the building. Since then, the belligerents have accused each other of being behind the strikes that threaten the security of the installations.
Ukraine has also accused Moscow for weeks of storing heavy weapons in the Zaporizhia power plant and using it as a base for strikes on Ukrainian positions. It also ensures that the Russian forces fire on the power station they occupy in order to accuse kyiv of these bombardments. Russian troops shelled the site “several times in the last day”Energoatom said again on Telegram on Saturday.
On the same day, Russia accused Ukraine of having fired seventeen shells at the plant’s compound in the past twenty-four hours. According to the Russian army, the Ukrainian army fired from around the town of Marhanet, which faces the plant, on the opposite bank of the Dnieper river, still controlled by kyiv.
Demilitarization of the site and international inspection
In order to avoid an escalation that could lead to the worst, the international community is calling for the demilitarization of the nuclear power plant site and the dispatch of an IAEA inspection mission to the site. IAEA experts are expected there ” next week “according to the adviser to the Ukrainian Minister of Energy, Lana Zerkal, who accuses the Russians of“artificially create obstacles” to this mission. Reproach immediately returned by Moscow.
In favor of an inspection of the plant, kyiv nevertheless demands that the international mission access it via Ukraine, so as not to legitimize the occupation of its territories by Russian troops. In an interview given Friday to Mondeits general manager, Rafael Mariano Grossi, specified that he is also working on the conclusion of an agreement so that “Experts from the agency can stay permanently in Zaporizhia” once the inspection mission has been able to take place.
What is the risk in the event of a nuclear disaster?
In what state will the inspectors find the plant, if they access it? Inaugurated in 1985, the Zaporizhia plant has six Soviet-designed VVER-1000 reactors, the last of which was commissioned in 1995. According to nuclear expert at Imperial College London, Mark Wenman, they were designed “to protect against natural disasters and/or man-made incidents”. The Director General of the Nuclear Safety Authority and President of the Association of Nuclear Safety Authorities of Western European Countries (Wenra), Olivier Gupta, notes however that “the robustness of the walls and the redundancy of the safety systems are favorable factors in the event of firing on the buildings housing the reactors, but up to a certain point”.
The reactors are not the only sensitive targets on the site. According to the head of the civil and military administration set up in this region of southern Ukraine controlled by the Russians, Evgueni Balitski, “several tons” of radioactive waste are stored on the site of the power plant and a strike on this deposit “would make the whole territory unsuitable for life”.
“A nuclear disaster on this type of reactor would not lead to radioactive release mechanisms identical to those of the reactor no 4 of Chernobyl. (…) However, we can seriously consider scenarios, (…) leading to Fukushima-type releases”estimates Bruno Chareyron, director of the laboratory of the Commission of independent research and information on the radioactivity (Criirad).
“In the worst-case scenario, where all the radioactivity from a reactor in Zaporizhia is released outside, we have found, out of a thousand meteorological sequences studied from the last ten years, one case where part of the country could potentially be affected by levels of radioactivity that would justify taking iodine tablets”, considers, for his part, the director delegate to the crisis with the director general of the Institute of radiation protection and nuclear safety (IRSN), Philippe Dubiau.
The Director General of the IAEA, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said restless. Expensive “Under the current circumstances, the scenario of an accident cannot be ruled out. There are continuous interruptions in the electricity supply, problems with spent fuel… An accident takes you from green to red without transition. »
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