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Power The Military

'Grave Concern' as Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant under Russian Orders (theguardian.com) 78

Posted by EditorDavid from the nuke-news dept.
"Staff at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are being told what to do by the Russian military commander who seized the site last week, in violation of international safety protocols," reports the Guardian: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expressed "grave concern" at the situation at the six-reactor plant, the largest in Europe. The agency was told by the Ukrainian nuclear regulator that "any action of plant management — including measures related to the technical operation of the six reactor units — requires prior approval by the Russian commander". The IAEA director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said on Sunday that the Russian military command over the nuclear plant "contravenes one of the seven indispensable pillars of nuclear safety and security" which states that the operating staff must be able to carry out their safety and security duties and be able to make decisions "free of undue pressure".

Russian forces shelled the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early hours of Friday morning, damaging a walkway between two of the six reactors, and starting a fire in a nearby building used for training. As a result some of the reactors were shut down and others were put on low power. The reactors themselves are well protected by a thick concrete shell, but there is concern that more vulnerable spent fuel rods could be hit, or that the power and cooling systems could be affected, potentially triggering a meltdown....

The IAEA said that the operators at the plant were now being able to rotate between three shifts, relieving the operators who had been on duty at the time the plant was seized, but there were still "problems with availability and supply of food" which the Ukrainian regulator said was affecting morale on the plant.
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'Grave Concern' as Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant under Russian Orders More

'Grave Concern' as Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant under Russian Orders

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  • about the seven indispensable pillars of nuclear safety and security?

    • Putin will hire homer to run the plant

    • People think Putin is going to stop with Ukraine? He's going to keep going.

      • People think Putin is going to stop with Ukraine? He's going to keep going.

        Uncle Volodya will first have to substantially renovate his arsenal now that everybody knows what a pile of junk most of it is and he'll also have to send the apparatchiks that run it, back to military school, before he can restart his unstoppable thunderstorm of conquest. In the mean time Uncle Volodya's cheif leverage is going to be rattling his nukes while he whines about sanctions. While he does that the rest of us will be able to enjoy deafening silence from the simps here in the west that used to exto

      • I wouldn't put it past him if he actually had the ability, but he's not likely to manage to take Ukraine by conventional means, and certainly has no chance of keeping it.

        Barring a decision to use nukes, though I do think that is quite likely:

        I just can't see it as a Nazi Germany vs. Poland situation.

        It's more like USSR vs. Afghanistan, or U.S. vs. North Vietnam. The stronger power won nearly every battle, yet not only lost the war, but suffered huge and politically unacceptable losses in the process, resul

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      On the theory that your (awkwardly worded) question had some sincerity beyond rhetoric, the answer is obviously "No one is", but that is missing the entire point. The point is to shut it down and make the Ukrainians freeze in the dark. Shutting it down safely is okay, but absolutely not essential to the point of capturing the plant and stopping the electricity. Destroying it would have been fine with Putin, too, though kind of awkward in terms of not "protecting" Crimea from a radiation disaster.

    • Look, I just want a nuclear power plant name that I can pronounce and say with regularity to sound up to speed, hip, and trendy. Okay? Thanks.

  • It sounds like they themselves are short on food, thanks to the little spymaster's mismanagement of his invasion.

    • To be specific as to who's fault it is:

      Reportedly, Putin didn't tell anyone what his plan was until the last minute. So the army themselves didn't know they were moving into Ukraine, and had no time to prepare supplies, when at the last moment he told them, "Go in."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xalqor ( 6762950 )
      No need to be fair to the Russians. They took over that power plant, so the responsibility for whatever happens to the people and equipment there is now a Russian responsibility. If there's a disaster it's their fault, even if the disaster happens after they leave and before Ukraine has time to fully recover.
  • "Nuclear experts" have said not to worry, that the worst the situation could get is not like Chernobyl but like Fukushima. But Fukushima is a catastrophe.

    • Well, sortof; I mean, mainstream media has cherry-picked statements and represented them as that.

      There is a lot of idiotic presumption, though, even on the part of the nuclear experts. You can be a nuclear expert, but also actually have no clue about different types of bomb-proofing. You can be a nuclear expert and also be a complete dufus when it comes to understanding how possible various events are; an expert trained in the operation of a nuclear plant is an expert in what to do, not in how likely variou

  • Putin the Gay has been claiming Ukraine has been seeking to a) reconstitute nuclear weapons or b) is trying to make a dirty bomb. Now that Russian forces control two nuclear power plants, guess what they'll find?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Sadly good point.

    • Actually Zelensky has been saying ( https://kyivindependent.com/na... [kyivindependent.com] ) Ukraine intended to abandon the Budapest memorandum if NATO would not give them membership. There are good reasons to interpret this as reconstituting nuclear weapons.

      • North Korea is nuclear capable and shares a border with Russia. Wonder why Putin doesn't care about them?

      • That would be very difficult for them.

        First, they don't have an active nuclear weapons program.
        Operating some non-breeder reactors doesn't mean you're anywhere close to a nuclear weapons. You lack the material for the weapon, a way to make the material for the weapon, and the knowhow to make a weapon.

        Second, the NTP makes it very difficult for them to get their hands on the material required to do so. At the point where they're in violation of the NTP, all supply of fertile fuel will be shut off, immed
      • And Putin just proved that the Ukraine was justified in their fears and that building a deterrent to invasion would have been a good plan. Whether that deterrent was NATO membership or Nuclear weapons.
      • And good for them, I say. It's now perfectly clear to everyone with a brain that the Budapest memorandum was a colossal mistake.

        • That was obvious the day it was proposed, to anyone with any understanding of history.

          The U.S. was never going to defend Ukraine against Russian invasion on its own. There was never a way to do that without risking nuclear war. I'm not certain it will even honor the NATO treaty if it sees any other option whatsoever. It won't matter because other European nations most certainly will, and we'll be drawn into the resulting war anyway.

          But other potentially nuclear-capable nations will surely take note, and

      • 1. Russia abandoned the agreement by attacking
        2. US/UK violated the agreement by not defending Ukraine

        So, the agreement is already gone, it just follows that if three of the major powers that signed the agreement didn't support it, that they shouldn't support it either.

    • This is... sadly not an unrealistic concern.
  • I know these are two different sites in the same large country. Has anyone found a good explanation for why Russia would want to take the Chernobyl site? I wonder if there is a connection or if it's more symbolic.
    • It could simply be that it was "on the way," or Putin might be worried about someone blowing it up and blaming him, or to use as a bargaining chip, or any number of other reasons.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Vulch ( 221502 )

      Chernobyl is near the main route to Kyiv, and normally has Ukranian troops stationed nearby. Bypassing it would have left those troops able to hit the logistics and resupply for the Russian advance.

    • Has anyone found a good explanation for why Russia would want to take the Chernobyl site?

      There’s a multitude of reasons to take it.

      If we give them the benefit of the doubt—which we shouldn’t, but let’s pretend—they would want to do it for no reason other than to ensure its security in an unstable situation. As the invading force, they know that their invasion could cause breaks from typical security procedures that may leave the plant vulnerable to attacks or infiltration from rogue elements. As such, the best thing to do is to secure it such that they can be sure

      • Unsure what kind of threat you could impose with Chernobyl.
        It's reactors are long ago shut down, its fuel long ago cold.
        You could contaminate the local area, of course. But adding more of a mess to the Exclusion Zone hardly sounds like any more than flicking your thumb at someone.

        • It's reactors are long ago shut down, its fuel long ago cold.

          https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]

          Check the date on that story. Things won’t be cold for a long, long time.

          • https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]

            This one too, also from the same time period.

          • Ok, thatâ(TM)s fair. I was referring to the decommissioned reactors whoâ(TM)s fuel rods have been bathing in water for over a decade. Sure, the stuff under the sarcophagus isnâ(TM)t precisely âoecoldâ, but itâ(TM)s also not actively touched. It isnâ(TM)t something that is going to explode if someone doesnâ(TM)t operate the plant. That shit will always be a concern, which is why itâ(TM)s buried under several billion dollars of concrete aside from the collapsed rea

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by hazem ( 472289 )

              Nothing they do to that thing is going to cause some kind of nuclear disaster.

              I suspect detonating a large nuke under all that would be pretty disastrous. And it's not something I'd dismiss as "oh, he'd never do that".

              • You suspect it would be more disastrous than the nuke itself?

                Na. You can already make a nuke very dirty, if that's your goal. Hoping an appreciable amount of a surface burst goes into vaporizing the fission byproducts of the decommissioned reactors is comic book villain shit.
                • Sure, but setting of a dirty nuke can perhaps more easily be traced back, blowing up Chernobyl and blaming it on the Ukrainians is much easier....
                  • That's what I'm trying to say. There's no accidental way to blow up Chernobyl.
                    It's not a live nuclear reactor, and its fuel is spent and cooled down.
                    If we're talking about the corium underneath the sarcophagus, which is still undergoing a nuclear reaction, it's not clear to anyone:
                    A) what you'd do to make it worse
                    B) do to the protection structures to make what you did matter.

                    Decommissioned nuclear power plants aren't nuclear bombs just waiting to be touched off. They contain some seriously radioactive

    • Has anyone found a good explanation for why Russia would want to take the Chernobyl site?

      It's the shortest route to Kiev, and the Ukrainians had no army stationed there. If they wanted to go around Chernobyl on the East, they would have to cross a rather large river. If they wanted to go around on the west, they would have to go through a swamp. So Chernobyl was the option chosen, even if it means taking a few years off the lives of their soldiers.

    • If you are taking a country the last thing you would do would be leave behind items that can be weaponized out of spite. People will do crazy shit when they have everything taken from them, it would be insane to not take them. So not so much a want as a must.

    • Has anyone found a good explanation for why Russia would want to take the Chernobyl site? I wonder if there is a connection or if it's more symbolic.

      Accumulating forces around nuclear reactors means that those forces are sheltered from air strikes from NATO or Ukrainian forces.

      None of those facilities are particularly resistant to air strikes and Putin has just as much access to the design specifications of those reactors as any former Soviet country does with one installed.

      I'd suggest that if Russian forces capture the facilities at Yuzhnoukrainsk, Khmelnytskyl, Rivne then they achieve the following goals:
      1. Tactically they have a base for their fo

      • Lots of stuff I never even considered, one addition: this whole taking nuclear plants puts the strategic disadvantage of nuclear power into the minds of those now deciding on more of it or not, and Putin still has lots of oil to sell...
    • If you want to seriously knowâ¦. There are still functional nuclear reactors there. I believe the lines back to moscow were cut years ago. Chernobyl is mostly misunderstood, itâ(TM)s quite safe to be inside any building.

      • Not quite any building...there are still rooms that have corium in them. Though I suppose calling that area a building might be overstating it a bit.

  • Those wind turbines are looking pretty attractive about now...

  • Are we really surprised that groups engaged in an active shooting war aren't super concerned about the particulars of some safety rules? Methinks they have other, slightly more pressing concerns at the moment.

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