Bombings near a reactor, damaged power lines, particularly stressful working conditions, difficulties in bringing in the parts needed for maintenance or repair operations… The war waged by Russia greatly reduced the level of safety of the Zaporijia, in southern Ukraine, raising fears of a nuclear accident.
Using the same technology as the French reactors, the six units of the largest power plant in Europe have safety systems similar to those of other European countries. After the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011, Ukraine, for example, improved its facilities to be able to cope with a situation of total loss of power supply. It thus has about twenty emergency diesels, which could take over in the event of a supply failure and can operate for seven days before having to be refueled. The supply of electricity is an essential element for the operation of power plants, which makes it possible to cool the reactors and prevent a meltdown of the core.
But the Zaporizhia facility, like all the other 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 firing on the buildings housing the reactors, but up to a certain point”notes Olivier Gupta, the Director General of the Nuclear Safety Authority and President of the Association of Nuclear Safety Authorities of Western European Countries.
Real-time measurements
If the worst case scenario – an accident with radioactive release – were to occur, three types of emergency measures to protect populations would be available to States: evacuation of populations in the immediate vicinity of the plant; sheltering, i.e. asking people to stay indoors; and taking iodine tablets, which saturate the thyroid glands with non-radioactive iodine, so that inhaled radioactive iodine cannot bind there. “Ukraine, which has a national response plan and local plans for the areas around the power plants, is prepared to implement actions within a radius of 50 kilometers around the facilities”, explains Philippe Dubiau, director delegated to the crisis with the director general of the Institute for radiation protection and nuclear safety (IRSN). The war led by Russia could, however, greatly complicate the implementation of these devices: how to take shelter in destroyed houses or call people to move into a combat zone?
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