The security of the site occupied by the Russian army in the south of Ukraine has been largely weakened by the in progress conflict launched by Moscow.
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Bombings near a reactor, damaged power lines, particularly stressful working conditions, difficulties in bringing the parts necessary for maintenance or repair operations … The war waged by Russia has largely degraded the level of safety The Zaporijia power plant, in southern Ukraine, raising fears of a nuclear accident.
Similarly as a technology as French reactors, the six units of the largest central in Europe have safety systems similar to those of other European countries. After the Fukushima accident in 2011 in Japan, Ukraine, for example, improved its installations to be able to cope with a total loss of the power supply. It thus has around twenty emergency diesels, which could take over in the event of a supply of supply and can operate seven days before having to be recharged in fuel. Electricity supply is a key element for the operation of power plants, which allows to cool the reactors and avoid a fusion of the heart.
But the installation of Zaporijia, like all other power plants, was not designed to operate in a context of armed conflict. “The robustness of the walls and the redundancy of the safety systems are favorable factors in the event of fire on the buildings sheltering the reactors, but up to a certain point,” notes Olivier Gupta, the director general of the security authority Nuclear and president of the Association of Nuclear Safety Authorities in Western Europe.
If the worst scenario – an accident with radioactive rejection – were to occur, three types of emergency measures to protect populations would be available to states: the evacuation of populations being in the immediate vicinity of the central; sheltering, that is to say asking the inhabitants to stay inside; And taking iodine tablets, which saturate the thyroid glands in non -radioactive iodine, so that the inhaled radioactive iodine cannot be fixed there. “Ukraine, which has a national response plan and local plans for areas around the power plants, is prepared to set up actions within a radius of 50 kilometers around the facilities”, explains Philippe Dubiau, director Delegate for the crisis with the Director General of the Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN). The war waged by Russia could however greatly complicate the implementation of these devices: how to take shelter in destroyed houses or call people to move to a combat zone?
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