Update at 3am Eastern standard time — video above posted at 8am EST
Russians have taken control of the power plant. According to the Guardian's live update Ukrainian reactor operators are being allowed to continue to work to maintain site safety but there is concern about maintaining active cooling for the hot reactors which have just been shut down. Ukraine’s nuclear regulators appear to be concerned about the possibility of a major nuclear incident if cooling cannot be continued.
An update written at 7.30am on the State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation of Ukraine’s Facebook page reads:
The Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant is captured by the military forces of the Russian Federation.”
However, the inspectorate says employees are continuing to work on the premises, while operational personnel control the safe condition of the power units.
According to the inspectorate units two and three have been disconnected from the network and and nuclear installations are being cooled down
“Changes in the radiation state for the current time have not been recorded,” the update adds.
However the loss of cooling nuclear fuel will lead to “significant radioactive emissions into the environment” and such an event “may outgrow all previous NPP accidents, including the Chernobyl NPP and Fukusima-Daichi NPP” the authority says, adding that a damage to a reservoir of processed nuclear fuel as a result of the shelling will also lead to radioactive discharge.
The fire that was burning at a building not involved with the reactors or the control of the reactors on the perimeter of the facility has been put out. That is no longer a concern.
end 3am update -—
Ukrainian civilians valiantly tried to keep Russian attackers away from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant but it came under attack from Russian artillery on the night of 3 March. Twitter reports from local officials say that the reactors that were in operation have been safely shut down. An administration building has caught fire, but the reactors buildings have not. Because the reactors were shut down very recently they may still require active cooling. These are Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR’s) so they are much safer than the Fukushima style boiling water reactors and the Chernobyl graphite reactor, but there may still be safety issues with cooling the fuel rods.
Ukrainan officials are now saying that the reactors are safe.
What’s totally insane about the shelling of this nuclear complex is the risk of a very dirty nuclear accident. The site stores about 160 dry casks of spent fuel which is being stored on site because there is no where else to store it. If one of these casks were blown up by a direct hit it could spread deadly nuclear waste. Obviously, if a reactor were damaged by an attack it would create a hell of a mess.
Zaporizhzhya spent-fuel dry storage facility
Following the breakup of the USSR, spent-fuel could no longer be transported to Russia, and the shortage of free space in the cooling pools demanded a spent-fuel dry storage facility (SFDSF) at the site. The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine issued a license for the development of the first SFDSF at Zaporizhzhya NPP in July 2001. Zaporizhzhya is the first Ukrainian NPP with VVER type reactors to include an SFDSF with a 50-year service life.
The spent nuclear fuel from the reactors is stored in cooling pools for four to five years until the residual energy and radioactivity decrease. It is then transferred to the SFDSF.
The storage system can accommodate more than 9,000 spent-fuel assemblies in 380 ventilated storage casks of 144t each. The facility began operations in August 2004 and 167 casks have already been installed on the site.
www.power-technology.com/…