The world must “rethink nuclear safety”, urged Ukrainian Energy Minister German Halouchtchenko, describing the risks incurred in Zaporijjia where the plant has already missed an accident five times. “This is a question posed to all the countries of the world,” he said Monday evening in an interview with AFP on the sidelines of a trip to Paris for a conference in support of Ukraine.
German Halouchtchenko comes both to ask for equipment to help Ukrainians get through the winter when more than 40% of the energy infrastructure has been demolished in the past two months, and to prepare for the future and reconstruction.
The country is more than 50% dependent on nuclear power for its electricity production, and there is no intention of giving it up. “We have plans for new plants, contracts already signed, and we will continue with nuclear because we have great experience and thousands of professionals,” he said.
On the other hand, according to the Ukrainian Minister, it is urgent to review the civil nuclear safety manuals which, according to him, have not foreseen what is happening in Ukraine. “Nobody thought about that, because all the risks considered were accidental,” he says, including the crash of a plane and the ability of a reactor to withstand it.
“We have to consider military threats, it’s absolutely new, not just for us but for the whole world, we have to think about it together (…) This war absolutely changes our vision of nuclear security and safety”, he said.
“What we see, and it’s not just a Ukrainian nuclear safety problem, is that any missile can fly a thousand kilometers and hit a nuclear reactor. (…) This situation absolutely pushes us to rethink what we need to do from a security point of view”.
“Crazy Game”
Zaporijjia, the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine and Europe with six reactors, in the east of the country, is under Russian occupation. Discussions to demilitarize the area have stalled, and the area around the site continues to be bombarded.
“They (the Russian forces) bombed the lines that connect Zaporizhia to the network on several occasions, and the plant was blackout five times”, calculates the minister. However, a nuclear power plant, even disconnected as is the case of Zaporijjia since September, needs a constant power supply to cool the fuel.
Each time, “the diesel generators started” and “it’s a Fukushima-style scenario” that started, details the minister, in reference to the 2011 disaster in Japan where the Fukushima power station had switched to its generators after earthquake, followed by a tsunami.
“They bomb the Ukrainian lines, the plant starts its diesel generators, and that means we are one step before the accident,” he said. The generators have fuel reserves to last ten days. “It’s a crazy game around nuclear security… a dangerous game,” he said.
In Zaporijjia, security is provided by Ukrainian personnel who, according to the minister, live “under daily moral and physical pressure”, not to mention fatigue and episodes in which technicians have been shot at by snipers when fixing lines, he said.
“Should we fear a missile attack at the Rivne or Khmelknitsky nuclear power plant? I don’t know, I won’t be surprised if it happens because we have already had a missile fall a hundred meters from “a reactor in the south of Ukraine, accidentally or not. But when you use 100 missiles, there can be accidents and a missile will fall anywhere,” adds Guerman Halouchchenko.