Lack of water threatens Zaporizhia nuclear reactors

by time news

2023-06-08 19:25:16

Las water reserves of the Kakhovka damdamaged in southern Ukraine, already not enough to cool the reactors of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. The water level isbelow the critical threshold of 12.7 meters“, warned Igor Syrota, the head of the Ukrainian operator Ukrhydroenergo, on television. This means that it is no longer capable of feeding “the pools of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant” for cooling operations, he added.

The printed by Kajovka it was destroyed on Tuesday, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people in the Kherson region. Both kyiv and Moscow blame each other for its destruction. The dam sits on the Dnieper River and forms a reservoir that supplies cooling water to the nuclear plant some 150 kilometers upstream. The Zaporizhia plant, occupied by Russia, is the largest in Europe.

The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, assured this week that the water could no longer be pumped if the level of the reservoir dropped below 12.7 meters. The United Nations agency has a team of experts at the plant, where measures have already been imposed to limit water consumption, using it only for “essential activities related to nuclear safety,” Grossi declared. The plant’s reactors have already been shut down, but they still need cooling water to ensure that a nuclear catastrophe does not occur.

The Government rules out an imminent risk

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Despite growing fears, the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant does not present any “imminent risk” after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko told AFP on Thursday, although he warned that “we must be vigilant”. the situation. The minister also called on Europe to “increase” its electricity deliveries, following Russian attacks “against the country’s energy infrastructure” and the destruction of the dam, which caused significant flooding. “We ask Europe to increase” the level of electricity imports, from one to two 2 gigawatts, he said.

Of the 600 square kilometers affected by the floods after the destruction of the Kajovka dam, in the south of the country, “up to 80 towns could be destroyed”, “20,000 homes are without electricity” and “at least 10,000 hectares of agricultural land” were damaged, listed the minister, in statements on the sidelines of a meeting on the outskirts of Paris of the International Energy Agency (IEA). Asked about the safety around the Zaporizhia nuclear plant, the largest in Europe, Galushchenko confirmed that the water level in the cooling pool depended on the reservoir of the Kakhovka dam. “We do not see imminent risk for now” but “we must monitor the situation.” Currently the level of the cooling pool stands at 16.6 meters, he specified. The “critical level” is 12.7 meters to be able to feed the plant’s cooling circuits. “There is a risk, but not now,” he reiterated, especially during summer temperatures and evaporation.

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