Fears of Radioactive Catastrophe at Europe’s Biggest Nuclear Power Plant

For all the nightmare scenarios conjured by the war in Ukraine, this week’s warnings of a nuclear meltdown are as frightening as any.

The warnings came from all sides. On Thursday, Ukrainians and Russians both were warning that the other planned either to attack the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility or — in a much-repeated claim from the Ukrainian side — that Russian forces planned to cut power to the site. Ukrainian workers at the plant said they had been told to remain at home Friday, and a Ukrainian official warned that Russia was “trying to induce a nuclear disaster” by threatening a power cut.

Ukrainians and outside experts alike said that could cause a catastrophe on par with the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who met Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Lviv on Thursday, said, “any potential damage to Zaporizhzhia is suicide.” And there was this plea from a Telegram post put out by Ukrainian workers at the Zaporizhzhia plant: “Think about the future of our Earth, about the future of our and your children.”

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is Europe’s largest and sits roughly 300 miles from the site of the Chernobyl disaster. The facility was seized by Russian troops in the early days of the war, and in recent weeks the Russians have used it as a base for heavy shelling of Ukrainian targets. As Grid’s Science Reporter Dan Vergano reported earlier this month, the “appropriation of the Zaporizhzhia plant — where at least two still-working reactors require careful maintenance to safely operate — to use as a shielded artillery park is a dangerous new low in nuclear brinkmanship.”

What Is The Current Threat Around Zaporizhzhia?

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who met Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Lviv on Thursday, said: “Any potential damage to Zaporizhzhia is suicide.”

This month, General Valery Vasiliev, the commander of Russia’s radiation, chemical and biological troops, allegedly threatened to detonate explosives at the plant, although this report was rejected as likely to be false by the Institute for the Study of War.

Nuclear expert Hamish de Breton-Gordon told the newspaper The National this week that if explosives are wired up inside the plant to blow up, “then the chances for meltdown and contamination is extremely high,” he said.

“They’ve got six reactors at Zaporizhzhia, so in the worst case the contamination could be absolutely massive and catastrophic,” he said. “It would be less harmful to use a tactical nuclear weapon.”

European intelligence officials have told Bloomberg that Russia is likely to be using the power plant to provide cover for troops and equipment, which would undermine the safety of the plant’s operations.

Intelligence officials also assessed that Russia would continue to spread disinformation painting Ukraine’s actions toward the plant as reckless and Moscow has warned of unsubstantiated false-flag operations.

Mark Nelson, founder of the Radiant Energy Fund, an adviser on nuclear energy, dismissed claims that an accident at the plant could cover parts of Europe with radioactive substances.

He told Newsweek that the containment domes around Zaporizhzhia’s reactors are 1.2 meters (3.9 feet) thick and made of concrete with steel reinforcement. This means they are strong enough to allow the total depressurization of the primary circuit of the reactors in any pressure event.

“Accidental shelling with smaller munitions are extremely unlikely to breach the domes,” he said.

The trickiest internal event would be if a reactor in full power operation suddenly has a violent chopping of its pipes carrying hot water in and out of the reactor. Then all the water loses pressure and flashes almost instantly into steam.

“The domes are designed to contain this extremely powerful event.”

The first line may or may not be true

The second line is, for all practical purposes, bullshit https://t.co/nvrEY6DzVD

— Mark Nelson (@energybants) August 18, 2022

How Does Zaporizhzhia Compare to Chernobyl?

Experts say there are important differences between Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl.

Nelson said Chernobyl was a radically different design that “had little more than a glorified shed above the reactor, and the reactor did not have a surrounding high pressure containment—just a heavy concrete lid sitting on top.”

“Comparisons to Chernobyl are almost completely useless, unless noting the difference in accident possibilities,” he told Newsweek.

“Chernobyl kept operating as a nuclear power plant. So even the ‘death zone’ was a myth in terms of practical danger to working people at the plant.

Nuclear materials expert Mark Wenman of Imperial College London told the BBC in March that the Zaporizhzhia site was far more secure than Chernobyl.

He said the plant’s reactor was in a steel-reinforced concrete building that can handle “extreme external events, both natural and man-made,” including an aircraft crash or an explosion.

The Zaporizhzhia plant also does not contain any graphite in its reactor. Graphite at Chernobyl caused a large fire and was the source of the radiation plume that spread across Europe.

Unlike Chernobyl’s RBMK-1000 reactors, Zaporizhzhia uses more modern pressurized water reactors, which require much less uranium fuel in the reactor core, thus limiting the likelihood of a runaway chain reaction.

Robin Grimes, a professor of materials physics at Imperial College London, told Live Science in March that puncturing the Zaporizhzhia reactors’ twin shells would not lead to an explosion like Chernobyl, but would release a lot of dangerous material.

Nelson said: “If people want to be alert in ways that match the possible severity of intentional actions to destroy the plant, then being ready to stay inside for a few days with windows closed is a good step to take, with the knowledge that multiple meltdowns could take place without releasing radiation.”