ZAPORIZHZHIA OCCUPATION | COVER STORY
police and Ukrainian legal authorities have been removed and replaced. The Russian flag hangs over the town hall building. Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is still under the control of the
Russian military. According to the utility, there are around 50 military vehicles, about 400 soldiers and a lot of weapons and explosives there. Unexploded shells were blown up by the Russian military almost on the site. They do not interfere in the operations of the site, but they force the plant management to coordinate all actions and technical decisions with their representatives. Russia has sent a group of employees of Russian nuclear plants, officially for assessing nuclear safety after the shelling of the station and for assisting in repairs. Ukrainian plant personnel ensure the safe operation of the units, some have been transferred to remote work and the staff minimise contact with the military. This is challenging given the thousands of people who have already died in Ukraine. Reactor operators should be thinking about operations and reactor safety, not about their personal safety and the masked gunmen nearby. There have been cases where employees, including staff in main control rooms, have left the town with their families and haven’t returned to work. Some staff were unable to return to the town after vacations. Due to the collapse of transport infrastructure, the station is unable to obtain the spare parts and materials necessary for qualitative and timely maintenance and repair. Its annual purchases run to thousands of items and it was only by the end of the second month that the station managed to deliver humanitarian cargo to the town, including technical equipment that is critical for its activities. Ongoing hostilities have also seen two of the four high-
voltage power lines damaged and more than once only a single line remained in operation. None of this contributes to maintaining the proper safety culture.
The outlook for safety at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant What happens next with station safety will largely depend on military activity. The most optimistic scenario is that Ukraine will liberate this territory and take the plant under full control following all safety standards. However, the occupying forces recently declared the territory to be part of Russia and that the plant already belongs to the Rosatom
system. The south of Ukraine is occupied, and the Russians are on the move to annex these territories. There is hope that there will be no more hostilities and
the Russian military will leave the site and the town without fighting, conducting acts of revenge or laying mines within the territory. There is another less optimistic scenario – the war will move into an indefinite frozen conflict. There is no reason to believe that Russia will easily give up Zaporizhzhia. After all, the plant is a quarter of the country’s power sector. Under this scenario it can be assumed that the situation
with station safety will worsen. Any isolation of the plant will result in delayed and reduced repairs. Modernisation programmes will be postponed indefinitely or cancelled. Any violation of the safety limits and conditions will force the staff to seek and find compromises that will seem reasonable under the circumstances. The fact that not all units are in operation is a small glimmer of optimism, but the number of human errors and equipment failures will likely increase. Ukraine is the first country in the world with a developed
peaceful nuclear industry that has faced large-scale military aggression. Zaporizhzhia is the first nuclear plant in operation in the history of nuclear power that was fired upon by tanks. We must conclude that the impossible is possible and that a country with a developed civil nuclear industry can stoop to military aggression. There is no relevant experience in the world and no regulatory framework for such a situation. No one knows how the industry should respond to a nuclear-dangerous military attack. Though theoretically possible, a readiness to resist bombing cannot economically be built into the design of nuclear power plants. Obviously, technical and procedural measures will be developed to compensate and mitigate against the negative consequences of a military attack on nuclear power plants. Anti-tank and air defences will perhaps be added, and protective perimeters to defend against rocket and air attacks built. This event will certainly appear on the list of beyond design basis accidents and in future probabilistic safety analyses. Many industrial, national and international documents in the field of nuclear safety will be revised and further developed. But these problems are not nuclear industry problems as such, they lie in the realm of politics and our collective inability to prevent military conflicts. ■
Left: Luckily the extensive damage seen at nearby buildings did not extend to the reactors at Zaporizhzhia Photo credit: Energoatom
www.neimagazine.com | June 2022 | 21
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