Europe’s largest nuclear power plant It was hit by Russian shelling early on Friday, sparking fires and raising fears of a disaster that could affect the whole of Central Europe for decades, such as the Chernobyl recession of 1986.
Concerns later faded after Ukrainian firefighters put out the fire and officials announced that no radiation had been released.
Ukraine’s state nuclear regulator previously said no change in radiation levels had been recorded so far. zaporizhia plant came under attack.
International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Mariano Grossi later said no radioactive material was released, but two people were injured in the fire at the plant.
The agency also warned that waging war in and around such facilities presents high risk.
A major concern raised by Ukraine’s state nuclear regulator is that if the fighting disrupts the power supply to the nuclear plant, it will be forced to use less-reliable diesel generators to provide emergency power to the operating cooling system. Will be done.
The failure of those systems could lead to a disaster similar to that of Japan’s Fukushima plant, when a major earthquake and tsunami destroyed the cooling systems in 2011, triggering a meltdown in three reactors.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the consequences would be widespread and dire.
Below are five facts about the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the largest in Europe by capacity, which was confiscated by Russian troops.
- Zaporizhzhia is the largest of Ukraine’s four nuclear power plants, which together provide almost half of the country’s electricity.
- The International Atomic Energy Agency says war has broken out for the first time in a country with such a large and established nuclear power program.
- According to an IAEA database, Zaporizhzhia’s six units each have a net capacity of 950 megawatts of electricity, or a total of 5.7 gigawatts of electricity. The first unit was connected to the grid in 1984, and the last in 1995.
- The power plant is operating at only a fraction of its capacity. Citing an internal IAEA notification, the news agency Reuters Said unit 1 is “in outage”. Units 2 and 3 “have been disconnected from the grid, and the nuclear installation is being cooled”. Unit 4 is “operating at 690 MW of power”. Units 5 and 6 “being cooled”.
- The power plant is of strategic importance to Russia as it is only 200 km away from Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
Don’t miss a story! Stay connected and informed with Mint.
download
Our App Now!!