Image information source INDEPENDENT
01
Power at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was cut off
- There may be a risk of nuclear radiation
On the night of March 9 (Wednesday) local time, Ukrainian officials said that electricity at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was cut off. After being shut down, the plant was in danger of radiation leakage.
But the U.N. nuclear watchdog said "there was no serious impact on security."
At present, there are a total of 15 active nuclear reactors in Ukraine, distributed in four power stations, which are distributed as follows:
Zaporizhzhia - 6 reactors
Yuzhnoukrainsk - 3 reactors
Rivne - 4 reactors
Khmelnytskyi - 2 reactors
At present, some nuclear power plants have been occupied by Russian troops (excluding the abandoned nuclear power plant in Chernobyl).
Image credit @Defence Intelligence
Energoatom, Ukraine's state-run nuclear power company, explained the course of the incident: In a confrontation between the Ukrainian army and the Russian army, which has now "occupied" the abandoned nuclear power plant, a high-voltage power line was severely damaged, directly cutting off all links between its nuclear power plant and the state grid.
Foreign Minister Dimytro Kuleba explained: "At the moment we have a backup diesel generator that can only provide 48 hours of electricity to the plant – in this case, if there is no electricity to cool the spent nuclear fuel stored at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, then the radioactive material in it could eventually leak and threaten ukraine and other parts of Europe." ”
Image source TASSmedia.com
Dmytro Kuleba added: "A nuclear leak is imminent, and I call on the international community to urgently demand a ceasefire from Russia and allow maintenance units to rush to repair the Chernobyl nuclear power plant facilities in order to restore power to the plant as soon as possible." ”
The IAEA also commented on Twitter that Russia currently controls the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, a development that violates key safety treaties to ensure uninterrupted power supply, but in this case, the IAEA believes that there is generally no critical impact on nuclear safety.
But the IAEA has also warned that the nuclear material system currently monitoring the Chernobyl radioactive waste facility has stopped transmitting data.
Image credit: Radio Free Europe
A nuclear expert with knowledge of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant system said there was indeed good reason to worry about a potential nuclear leak, and the key now was how to quickly restore power: "The power outage at nuclear facilities is very dangerous. A power outage may cause water in storage facilities to evaporate and expose spent fuel rods. They may eventually melt, which in turn will lead to the release of large amounts of nuclear radiation. ”
Site of the Chernobyl nuclear leak | Image credit: Radio Free Europe
Energoatom also added: "Chernobyl has about 20,000 spent fuel components that cannot be kept cool during blackouts, and their heating up may cause radioactive material to be released directly into the outdoor environment." In addition, without a power supply, the plant's ventilation system would not work, exposing workers to dangerously high levels of nuclear radiation.
It is reported that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was controlled by the Russian army as early as February 24, the first day of the Outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis.
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A major nuclear leak in Russian history
As a nuclear power, Russia has a very tragic history of nuclear leakage. In most cases, it is because russia itself has covered its ears and repeatedly concealed the international community to delay the best time to deal with it, allowing the disaster to spread to the whole of Europe and even the whole world.
Image information source Telegraph
"The Chernobyl nuclear power plant spill | The Chernobyl Disaster was one of the worst nuclear leaks in history – an explosion occurred at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, at reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. 8 tons of intense radioactive material mixed with hot radioactive graphite fragments and nuclear fuel fragments gushed out.
It is estimated that the radiation pollution generated after the nuclear accident is more than 100 times that of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in Japan.
The Netflix drama "Chernobyl Chernobyl" | Source DailyPost UK
As for why nuclear leaks occur, it is mainly due to design problems in nuclear power plants and human factors such as personnel's misconfiguration of nuclear reactors.
According to the historical record, because the explosion occurred in the early morning, the team that was monitoring/controlling the reactor in the operation room at that time was a standby team, and many people were not experts at all, and had no understanding of the testing and distance of the nuclear reactor; therefore, after the nuclear reactor problem, the correct judgment and timely correction were not made, resulting in disaster.
After the explosion, the person in charge of the nuclear power plant tried to deny the occurrence of the leak, resulting in the first wave of firefighters and cleaners even touching the exploded nuclear reactor graphite with their hands without any protective equipment, plus hundreds of thousands of people to carry out emergency post-incident clean-up and landfill, resulting in all firefighters and most of the clean-up personnel rotting to death due to nuclear radiation within 3 months.
Moscow officials also tried to conceal the leak of the epidemic at the time, until the Nordic neighbors detected high concentrations of radioactive material in the air, and the Soviet Union finally confessed to the international community because it was out of control after several denials.
The significant impact of the Chernobyl nuclear leak | Image credit BBC News
The leak left 20,000 children with thyroid cancer, Thyroid Cancer; 330,000 people moved away from Pripyat, a community city closest to the plant.
Over the next 30 years, the total cost to address the nuclear leak and minimize harm was more than $700 billion — including the establishment of a new sarcophagus that blockaded the reactor ($2 billion/ for 100 years); the establishment of exclusion zones within 30 kilometers; the relocation of hundreds of thousands of people and the treatment of radiation-related diseases for 10 million people.
Up to now, a total of 7 million people in countries such as Russia/Ukraine/Belarus are still receiving state-issued subsidies for nuclear radiation.
The new sarcophagus of the Chernobyl Chernobyl 4 nuclear reactor | Source iStock
In addition, Russia had two major incidents of major and leaks in 1985 and 1993, namely, a reactor explosion caused by the mishandling of Soviet nuclear submarines while refueling, and a nuclear contamination accident that occurred during the reprocessing of spent reactor fuel by the Tomsk Siberian Chemical Company.
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Nuclear energy development and safety norms in the world today
Ontario Nuclear Power Plant, Canada | Image credit: Chuck Szmurlo
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown in a study that the world will take various feasible measures to limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2050. Among these feasible policies is the increasing amount of nuclear power generation in the future.
In recent years, with China's increased production capacity and Japan's restart of four nuclear reactors, global nuclear power generation has returned to the magnitude of the magnitude it was before the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
Image source World Economy Forum
As of October 2021, there are 441 nuclear reactors in about 30 countries around the world, supplying about 10% of the world's energy.
Among them, the United States has the world's largest number of nuclear reactors (93), with a total power of 97565 MW/ MW – accounting for 20% of the country's total power generation; the second-ranked France operates 56 nuclear reactors, which account for an astonishing 75% of the country's total power generation. Among the top five echelons are China (51), Russia (38) and Japan (33).
Not only that, but there are more than 50 nuclear reactors under construction worldwide, of which the largest nuclear power plants under construction are located in Finland and the United Kingdom, with a total power generation capacity of 1720 megawatts.
The new nuclear power plant under construction in China | Image credit CNN
The industrial team of the World Nuclear Association also said that they have also been working to strengthen the safety protection of nuclear energy and crisis response measures. The risk of accidents in factories is currently low and declining.
But whenever a nuclear leak occurs, it can cause serious and long-term pollution: Japan has been working to reduce the effects of radioactive contamination from the Fukushima accident nine years ago; the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant spill in the Soviet Union still affects the health of millions of people in different forms today.
The abandoned city of Pripyat | Image credit: Chuck Szmurlo