Public operator Energoatom turns one of the reactors on as an IAEA inspection is expected next week
The high risk of nuclear disaster disappeared this Friday with the partial reconnection of the Zaporizhzhya power plant, the largest in Europe and located in southern Ukraine. Public operator Energoatom reported that “one of the reactors” restarted after the plant had to shut down completely the day before for the first time in its history. The cause was a fire, according to Kiev, caused by Russian troops, who have controlled the facilities since March.
Energoatom specified that one of the last two reactors in operation of the six that operated at that plant before the war could be reconnected to the Ukrainian network and “the power increase is underway”. A necessary measure to prevent the so-called nuclear fusion, a serious phenomenon that can lead to a radioactive leak due to the transition of the fuel from solid to liquid state when it overheats because it is not cooled properly.
Since Zaporizhia was disconnected, only one diesel generator was responsible for performing this cooling task, a single source that was absolutely insufficient to ensure the safety of the facilities. “Russia is just one step away from a nuclear disaster for Ukrainians and all Europeans,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Thursday evening.
Kiev, plunged with Moscow into a spiral of mutual accusations for the factory attacks, has reiterated on numerous occasions that the consequences of a nuclear disaster in Zaporizhzhya would be “ten times greater than those after the Chernobyl accident” in 1986. for this reason, they have pushed for an immediate inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and have requested that the plant be inspected by experts from this UN entity.
After Ukraine’s Energy Minister, Germany’s Galushchenko, warned this Friday that Zaporizhzhya’s “employment and demilitarization” is “the only way” to prevent a nuclear disaster, his office claimed the IAEA is preparing to conduct an inspection to be carried out on site ‘next week’. This was announced by Galushchenko’s adviser Lana Zerkal, who, however, pointed out that Russia “artificially creates obstacles” to prevent experts from reaching the scene through the national territory, as agreed.
Thursday evening, when the total shutdown in Zaporizhzhya was announced, IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said he was determined to “manage personally” the plant. “We cannot afford to waste any more time,” he said. Meanwhile, Zelensky again denounced a Kremlin strategy to divert the plant’s power supply to the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.
In this regard, the US condemned any attempt and the president, Joe Biden, demanded that Moscow return control of the factory to the Kiev government. “The electricity that Zaporizhzhya legitimately produces belongs to Ukraine and any attempt to disconnect it from the electricity grid to feed it into the Russian-occupied territories is unacceptable,” said Vedant Patel, spokesman for the foreign ministry. Affairs.
At the same time, in its daily war leg, Ukraine reported three dead and ten wounded in another wave of Russian bombing raids on the regions of Kharkiv (northeast), Donetsk (east) and Dnipropetrovsk (center). In the latter province, a rocket hit a train at Chaplino station on Wednesday, killing 25.
Source: La Verdad
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