The story so far: Nine days into its destructive military operation, Russia captured Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power plant on March 4. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in the early hours of the day that shelling by Russian troops had hit the site of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, causing a fire to break out.
How did it unfold?
Ukraine’s local state authorities said a fire had broken out at a building which functions as a training center outside the nuclear plant. Night time video footage from the plant showed the building on fire and shells were seen dropping on and around it, followed by an explosion near it.
An employee at the plant first reported through Telegram that Russian forces had attacked the nuclear power facility and there was a “a real threat of nuclear danger at the largest nuclear power plant in Europe”.
This was followed by a confirmation from the Ukrainian Foreign Minister at 8 am, who said that Russian forces were “firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia NPP,” adding that an immediate ceasefire should be instated so that firefighters can control the blaze. Mr. Kuleba also warned that if the plant blew up, the disaster would be “10 times larger” than the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.
At around 9:50am, the Ukrainian emergency service alerted that the fire at the training center in Energodar (the city of the NPP site) had been extinguished and radiation levels at the site were normal; no casualties were reported. The service added that only one of the six nuclear power reactors was operating at 690 Megawatt power and of the rest, one was “in outage” and others were being cooled down. All the reactors very safely shut down eventually.
Vienna-headquartered nuclear energy watchog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) then said that “essential equipment” at the power plant site had not been affected.
The attack drew sharp criticism from the US and European countries and early reports of the incident sent Asian stock markets spiralling.
Ukrainian authorities reported around noon that Russian military had seized the Zaporizhzhia plant and Operational personnel were monitoring the condition of power units.
Russia, meanwhile, blamed the attack on “Ukrainian saboteurs”, terming it a “monstrous provocation” not backed by proof.
What is the significance of the plant?
The Zaporizhzhia NPP is located in the city of Enerhodar, on the banks of the Dnieper river, just 200 kilometers from the conflicted Donbas region where Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces have been fighting. It is also 550 km south-east of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
It is one of the four nuclear power plants in Ukraine and also the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. It produces one-fifth of the country’s electricity and contributes half of the country’s nuclear power generation. It has six reactors, each with a power capacity of 950MW, making the total capacity of the plant 5,700MW, enough to power four million households.
The construction for the first reactor of the plant began in 1979, when Ukraine was a part of the USSR. The first reactor of the plant was connected to the power grid in 1984 and the last one in 1995. All the reactors in the plant are VVVER-1000 or Pressurised Water Reactors (PWR), originally designed in the Soviet Union.
On March 2, the road outside the power plant was blocked by Ukrainians who were protesting the Russian incursion.
Was there danger of a disaster?
The IAEA said that it was informed by Ukraine’s power regulator that no change in radiation levels was reported at the Zaporizhzhia NPP. The United States’ Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, said that the Nuclear reactors at the NPP were protected by “robust” containment structures.
Experts have said that this NPP is safer than the now defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, which was also recently captured by Russia.
The reactors in the Zaporizhzhia plant are Pressurised Water Reactors (PWR), which have a two-circuit design. This means that the nuclear-contaminated steam does not generate the final energy, but is used to power another circuit with non-contaminated steam, which in turn makes the turbines run. Experts have pointed out that these reactors also have a back-up cooling system for emergencies.
The operator of the power plant said that background radioactivity levels at the plant site were 0.1 microsieverts per hour, much below the accepted levels of radiation. In comparison with the levels during the Chernobyl disaster — 300 sieverts — this is many millions lower.
While Australian nuclear power plant expert Tony Irwin was quoted by The Guardian as saying that “the chances of explosion, nuclear meltdown or radioactive release are low,” he also added that it was “obviously” not a good idea to fire missiles at the reactors.
Another expert, Henry Sokolski, of the Nonproliferation Education Center, told Al Jazeera, that these plants were “never designed to be in a warzone,” adding that they are not capable of dealing with the vulnerabilities that come with being in a fire zone.
Mr. Sokolski also pointed out that if the power core of the reactor or its spent fuel pond were affected in such military operations, it would lead to massive release of radioactivity.
