Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is located in Ukraine. The battle scene is getting closer and explosives are said to have been placed. But even in the event of a deliberate terrorist attack, Ukraine will be spared a repeat of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, experts say to NU.nl.
The largest nuclear power plant in Europe is under high voltage in the Ukrainian province of Zaporizhzhia. The site is occupied by the Russian army, staff are exhausted and power lines are damaged. The International Atomic Energy Agency has been expressing great concern for months.
Those problems seem to be getting more and more serious. After blowing up the Kachovka Dam, a reservoir completely drained. With that, the main source of cooling water for the power station disappeared.
And as the front in the battle between the Ukrainian and Russian army creeps closer, the warning sounds that Russian troops have placed explosives at the nuclear plant and an attack to prepare.
The next question is what the military weapon is: lethal radiation – or the fear of it.
The fear of a nuclear disaster runs deep
With that fear, the world goes back to one shared memory: April 26, 1986, the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant – in the north of Ukraine, near the border with Belarus.
The World Health Organization estimates that exposure to radiation may have killed thousands of people, often many years after the disaster.
In Chernobyl, one of the four reactors went wrong. There are no fewer than six of these in Zaporizhzhia. For example, a worst-case scenario was quickly outlined: a nuclear disaster with a ‘fallout’ that could contaminate a large part of Ukraine and neighboring countries.
But the comparison with Chernobyl is unjustified, says radiation expert Lars Roobol to NU.nl. Or rather: it no longer applies since September, when the last of the six reactors was also shut down. The others have been out for over a year.
“Once you turn off the reactor, no new radioactivity is created.” Any remaining radioactive debris then decays. This ultimately produces harmless atoms. Depending on the type of radioactive substance, this decay takes seconds to hundreds of thousands of years.
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Only one hundredth of the radioactivity
What difference are months or a year? A lot, says Professor of Reactor Physics Jan Leen Kloosterman. A good measure of radioactivity is the amount of heat generated in the reactor. “The heat development is only 10 percent 24 hours after switching off,” says Kloosterman.
Even after that, the decline continues, says Roobol – albeit more slowly. After a year, roughly one percent of the energy remains in the reactor.
This decreasing heat has two important consequences, says nuclear safety advisor Mark van Bourgondiën of the Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection (ANVS). Less water is needed for cooling. And if it does go wrong, the consequences are considerably smaller.
In Düsseldorf, protesters gathered last week to express their concerns about the nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Photo: Getty Images
In worst case scenario, keep windows and doors closed
If the cooling of the reactors fails completely, it could still lead to a core meltdown, says Van Bourgondiën. In addition, radioactive material can spread into the environment, but not lethal levels over a large area.
“High radiation levels and radioactive contamination are still possible in the immediate vicinity of the plant. You are talking about an area of a few kilometers, possibly ten to twenty. Immediate protection measures must be taken there, such as keeping windows and doors closed for 48 hours. “
Depending on the wind direction, radioactive substances can still precipitate in a strip up to several hundred kilometers away. According to Van Bourgondiën, this will not so much lead to dangerously high radiation levels for the population, but it may make it necessary to close greenhouses and temporarily keep livestock in stables.
After Chernobyl, such concentrations of radioactive pollution also reached the Netherlands, but the experts have now ruled that out in the case of the plant at Zaporizhzhia.
Radioactive iodine is already gone, so pills are useless
If things do go wrong, people in the immediate vicinity of the plant will not benefit from iodine pills either, says Roobol.
Radioactive iodine can accumulate in the thyroid gland and cause cancer. By swallowing non-radioactive iodine during a disaster, the radioactive variant is absorbed much less.
“A dangerous form of iodine that can be released during a nuclear disaster is iodine-131,” says Roobol. “But that has a half-life of 8 days. So three months after the plant was shut down, there was less than a thousandth of that left.”
No influence on Ukrainian counter-offensive
What about the consequences of possible sabotage of the nuclear power plant for the war in Ukraine?
The front is stretched out. Two hundred kilometers west of the nuclear power plant, Ukrainian soldiers have crossed the Dnipro River. And three hundred kilometers to the northeast, Ukraine is retaking territory around Bakhmut.
Soldiers fight there under life-threatening conditions. But one meltdown in the nuclear power plant, the risks will not increase for them – and therefore will not affect the course of the war.
How is the international community reacting?
This story is also about politics. Sabotaging a nuclear power plant is using radioactivity as a weapon of war. And that is seen from Washington to Beijing as the world’s most important red line.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to cross that border anyway, he can strong counter reactions to expect. The ‘advantages’ for the Kremlin soon outweigh the disadvantages.
The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) therefore estimates that the nuclear power plant will not actually be blown up. Russia would instead according to ISW long-term threat of an incident. Not radiation, but fear as a weapon.
2023-07-02 09:06:36
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