2024-08-16 14:04:40
The fire that broke out at the occupied Zaporozhye nuclear power plant on Sunday has raised fears among analysts that the Russians could use it as a “dirty bomb”. Dmitry Gorchakov of the environmental organization Bellona believes that the Russian president is also trying to restore the operation of part of the “looted ” device.
A cooling tower was on fire at the Russian-occupied nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia. | Video: Reuters
Russia’s state energy group Rosatom said one of its cooling towers, which is used to cool nuclear reactors, caught fire. The UN nuclear watchdog has not noted any impact on nuclear safety. According to Newsweek, the cause of Sunday’s fire remains unclear.
“The fact that the facility is located on the front line and is operating under extraordinary pressure – both on its key operational systems (specifically water and electricity supplies) and on its Ukrainian personnel (who face harassment and work in an active war zone) – also means that it would be relatively easy for Russia to report the incident as an innocent accident or to blame the Ukrainian army or personnel,” the think tank Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) assesses the situation.
After the fire in Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, the British think tank reissued its analysis from September 2023. According to it, the risks concern “not only the threat of Russian sabotage, but also the gradual deterioration of the condition of the facility, which has been exposed to extreme operating conditions for more than two years.” .
A dirty bomb is a mixture of explosives, such as dynamite, and radioactive powder or pellets that cause dispersal after detonation. “Moscow may decide to deliberately cause failure of key security systems or to hit parts of the equipment to release radioactive material into the environment,” RUSI said.
Currently, six reactors are in shutdown mode from September 2022. Its only remaining power line supplies the current needed to keep the reactors from melting down.
Dmitry Gorchakov, a nuclear energy expert from the international environmental project Bellona, who gave an interview to the Russian opposition website Meduza, thinks that Russian President Vladimir Putin would like to put at least one reactor into full operation. “It is difficult to say to what extent the Russian authorities are aware of the risks of such a launch. However, we can observe certain preparations already,” claims Gorchakov.
“I calculated that it would not make sense for them to restart more than one block, because there would simply be nowhere to divert the electricity. There are no power grids to send it outside the occupied territories, and the consumption in the occupied territories themselves is not very high. Moreover, after any due to management problems, the entire operation of the power plant was paralyzed,” says a nuclear expert from the organization, which is based in Oslo, Norway.
Undoubtedly, according to him, this is a very special gamble. “If Rosatom thinks that restarting will show that ‘now Russia is here for good, now there will be peace here’ and so on – it is a fantasy,” believes Gorchakov, according to whom damage to one cooling tower would mean the start of the entire power plants a problem, but it is not needed to start one or two reactors.
An expert from the Bellona organization believes that the tower could have been the target of an attack by Ukrainian drones, as the Russians hide military equipment and weapons in it. “It is far from the site of the power plant itself, which means far from the eyes of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Russians are much less shy about stationing troops there. And if the Ukrainians see them, they may consider such a facility a legitimate military target,” claims Gorchakov, who but he has no evidence of the Ukrainian attack.
An operation that went down in history. F-16s performed an adrenaline rush at a nuclear reactor. (Full article with video here)
“Great overload and accurate throw.” A snapshot of the attack on the reactor by Israeli F-16 pilots in 1981. | Video: Aktuálně.cz/YouTube/Isragent