In the latest installment of news from Ukraine, The New York Times reports the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Complex has experienced new attacks since the initial round reported on Friday. The report at The Times by Matthew Mpoke Bigg says the latest attacks were by rockets.
Ukraine accused Russian forces on Sunday of firing rockets that landed on the grounds of a nuclear power plant that Russia has seized in the south of the country, further raising the risk of an accident at a complex where the United Nations’ nuclear agency has said that the principles of nuclear safety have been violated. A pro-Russian regional official blamed Ukrainian forces for the attack.
The rockets fired Saturday evening landed near a dry spent fuel storage facility, where 174 casks are stored, each containing 24 assemblies of spent nuclear fuel, according to Enerhoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear energy company. One person was wounded by shrapnel and many windows were damaged.
Given what has been reported from Ukraine to date, it is likely this latest attack was by Russia despite claims blaming Ukraine. 1) Ukraine is very good at hitting what they aim at and only what they aim at; Russia is not. 2) It makes no sense for Ukraine to target a spent fuel repository and risk contaminating its own territory or otherwise damage critical infrastructure.
Previous posts I’ve written on Zaporizhzhia:
A March 11, 2022 report from NPR revealed that Russia’s initial assault to capture the complex came dangerously close to disaster.
Last week's assault by Russian forces on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was far more dangerous than initial assessments suggested, according to an analysis by NPR of video and photographs of the attack and its aftermath.
A thorough review of a four-hour, 21-minute security camera video of the attack reveals that Russian forces repeatedly fired heavy weapons in the direction of the plant's massive reactor buildings, which housed dangerous nuclear fuel. Photos show that an administrative building directly in front of the reactor complex was shredded by Russian fire. And a video from inside the plant shows damage and a possible Russian shell that landed less than 250 feet from the Unit 2 reactor building.
The security camera footage also shows Russian troops haphazardly firing rocket-propelled grenades into the main administrative building at the plant and turning away Ukrainian firefighters even as a fire raged out of control in a nearby training building.
The initial assessment of the risks at the time include this:
Lyman says that the reactors at Zaporizhzhia have an inherently safer design than the ones at Chernobyl, which in 1986 was the site of the worst nuclear disaster the world has ever seen.
Nevertheless, he said, if the firefight had damaged more of the plant's critical subsystems and the nuclear engineers on-site hadn't been able to reach emergency backups, the situation could have turned dire.
"In a couple of hours, you have core damage starting and a situation that is potentially irreversible," he says. "And then you have Fukushima."
The power complex is still operating several reactors; Ukrainian technicians are doing their best but if the Russian temporary occupation of Chernobyl is a guide, there has probably been looting of equipment from the complex and other damage. The latest NY Times report has this which is not reassuring:
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that a particular concern is its inability to access Zaporizhzhia for monitoring purposes. Ukrainian plant workers operate under stress, in part because Russian authorities suspect the possibility of sabotage, and the exiled mayor of the nearby city of Enerhodar, Dmytro Orlov, has said that some workers have been interrogated or have disappeared, and at least one has been killed.
All in all, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has created risk of a potential nuclear disaster scenario that clearly demonstrates how dangerous Russia under Putin has become. This is something to which the Tankies seem oblivious. It would appear that Ukraine and the rest of the world should be doing some worst-case scenario planning if they aren’t already; Russia apparently learned nothing from Chernobyl.