Page 1 of 2 Pages
     Years ago, I wrote a post about forty reasons not to support nuclear fission power generation. I had a whole section on questions of security. In that section I mentioned the problem of nuclear reactors in a war zone. At the time, it was theoretical, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine have made such issues practical questions.
      Rafael Grossi is the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He recently said in an interview that the situation is getting worse every day at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the southeastern city of Enerhodar. Russian troops seized the plant in early March, just weeks after they invaded Ukraine on February 24th.  He added that “Every principle of nuclear safety has been violated at the plant. What is at stake is extremely serious and extremely grave and dangerous.” Grossi mentioned many violations of the plant’s safety and went on to say that it is “in a place where active war is ongoing,” near territory controlled by Russia.
     The physical integrity of the plant has not been respected, Grossi said, pointing out that it had been hit with artillery at the beginning of the war when it was seized. Continuing information from Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of deliberate attacks on Zaporizhzhia.
     There is “a paradoxical situation” in which the power plant is under the control of the Russians, but the Ukrainian staff continues to operate the plant. This leads to inevitable moments of friction and allege violence. While the IAEA has some contacts with the staff at the plant, they are “faulty” and “patchy,” according to Grossi.
     Grossi mentioned that the supply chain of equipment and spare parts have been interrupted, “so we are not sure the plant is getting all it needs.” The IAEA also needs to perform very important inspections to be certain that nuclear materials are properly safeguarded. He said that “there is a lot of nuclear material there to be inspected.”
      Grossi said, “When you put this together, you have a catalog of things that should never be happening in any nuclear facility. And this is why I have been insisting from day one that we have to be able to go there to perform this safety and security evaluation, to do the repairs and to assist as we already did in Chernobyl.”
     The Russian capture of Zaporizhzhia renewed fears that the largest of Ukraine’s fifteen commercial nuclear reactors could be damaged. This would set off another emergency similar to the 1986 Chernobyl accident. This is considered to be the world’s worst nuclear disaster. Chernobyl is located about sixty-five miles north of Kyiv, the Ukraine capitol city.
     Russian forces occupied the heavily contaminated site soon after the February 24th invasion but turned control back over to the Ukraine at the end of March. Grossi personally visited Chernobyl on April 27th and tweeted that the level of safety was “like a red light blinking.” However, last Tuesday, he said that the IAEA set up an
assistance mission at Chernobyl at the that time “that has been very, very successful so far.”
Please read Part 2 next