According to WaPo just now, the damaged reactor at Chernobyl has been disconnected from the power grid.
Ukraine’s closed Chernobyl nuclear power plant has been disconnected from the nation’s power grid by Russian forces, Ukraine’s state-owned grid operator Ukrenergo said Wednesday, potentially jeopardizing the cooling of nuclear material stored at the site.
“Because of military actions of Russian occupiers the nuclear power plant in Chornobyl was fully disconnected from the power grid. Nuclear station has no power supply,” Ukrenergo said in a statement on its official Telegram page, using Ukraine’s spelling for the plant.
I don’t need to tell you guys this is potentially a huge disaster.
Electricity is needed for cooling, ventilation and fire-extinguishing systems at the closed site. In a statement on its Facebook page, Ukrenergo also said that emergency diesel generators have been turned on but that the fuel would last for only 48 hours.
FM Kuleba has called for an immediate cease fire to make any required repairs.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday on Twitter that the power loss “violates [a] key safety pillar on ensuring uninterrupted power supply,” but it added that “in this case IAEA sees no critical impact on safety.” The agency said factors including the volume of cooling water at Chernobyl were “sufficient for effective heat removal without need for electrical supply.”
On the other hand the IAEA said it had “lost contact with monitoring systems that transmit data” on nuclear materials at Chernobyl.
WTF.
www.washingtonpost.com/…
Don’t forget the other nuclear plant that is under Russian control, which is Europe’s largest. Workers are held hostage essentially; the Ukraine government’s energy Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko also told Reuters that authorities do not know what the radiation levels are at Chernobyl and have no control over what is happening at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.