The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is targeting the large cooling pond at Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant after the dam burst on the Dnipro. The pressure on the dike around the lake is increasing on the inside because the level of the dammed river has dropped sharply on the outside, the IAEA reports in Vienna on Friday evening.
While Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is not threatened in the near term, the destruction of the Kachowka dam and increased military activity would create “considerable new difficulties,” IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said. His authority – which has a team stationed at the Russian-occupied nuclear power plant – is closely monitoring the situation. The environmental organization Greenpeace had previously warned on Friday about a rupture in the cooling pond.
Cooling water available for months
According to the IAEA, there is, in principle, enough water in the pond and other parts of the nuclear power plant to cool the decommissioned reactors and spent fuel rods for several months, even if, as a result of the destruction of the dam, water will no longer be able to flow from the sinking Dnipro. reservoir could be pumped.
The nuclear power plant expert Georg Steinhauser of the Vienna University of Technology also spoke of an “all clear” in the ORF “ZiB 2”. Since the nuclear power plant’s reactors have already been shut down, a “significantly lower cooling capacity” is currently required. According to the expert, it would not be possible to work under full load at the moment. But nuclear fission was interrupted. As a result, the heat to be cooled is “only one thousandth of what it used to be”.
According to Nikolaus Müllner, an expert on reactor safety at the Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, the medium-term safety of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia is at risk after the destruction of the dam. The water supply for the cooling systems is guaranteed for several months. But given the violence of war, it is questionable whether this time window can be used to develop alternative water sources, says the head of the Institute for Security and Risk Sciences. “Of course it’s a threatening situation,” Müllner said.
Right on the front line
Under normal circumstances, a few months would be enough for the intake pipes to sink into the Dnipro reservoir, Müllner said. However, it is difficult to estimate whether this is possible at the moment, “because the nuclear power plant is right on the front line,” according to the expert.
The Ukrainian nuclear energy company Enerhoatom announced in the evening that, against the background of the developments at the cooling pond, reactor number five is now also being put into the so-called cold shutdown – a safer state. The other blocks are already cold switched off.
Source: Krone
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