Emergency Generators on, Safety Situation Vulnerable
Due to the loss of its external power source, the nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia is reliant on emergency generators to keep its nuclear fuel cool and avert a catastrophe.
The power outage on Monday was blamed on both sides. Locals with ties to Russia claimed that Ukraine had severed a power line, and the state nuclear power company of Ukraine, Energoatom, claimed that Russian shelling was to blame.
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Safety Situation
The director of the nuclear energy inspector for the UN confirmed the outage and stated that the “nuclear safety situation at the plant (is) extremely vulnerable.”
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi stated on Twitter that “we must agree to preserve (the) plant now; this scenario cannot continue.
The six reactors at the plant are shut down, but they still require a steady flow of energy to keep the nuclear fuel inside cool and avoid a potential meltdown.
The backup diesel generators have enough fuel, according to Energoatom, to run for about ten days.
It declared in a statement published online that “the countdown has started.”
The plant is the largest nuclear power station in Europe, and it is located in a region of southern Ukraine that is seized by Russia close to the front lines along the Dnipro River.
According to Energoatom, this was the plant’s seventh power outage since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The external power has always been restored following the emergency generators’ activation in all previous instances.
The plant supplied nearly a quarter of Ukraine’s electrical requirements before Russia’s invasion.
According to the Ukrainian energy ministry, the most recent Russian shelling caused equipment at substations to be damaged, which resulted in approximately 250,000 people losing power in the Zaporizhzhia area. However, power has since been restored to the majority of these consumers.
Zaporizhzhya and its History
History, industry, and scenic beauty come together in Zaporizhzhya, a bustling Ukrainian city perched on the banks of the Dnieper River. It is the sixth-largest city in the Ukraine with a population of over 700,000 and acts as a vital commercial and cultural powerhouse.
The nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhya, which received US help in 2021, is situated outside the city and is one of the city’s significant features. The largest facility of its sort in Europe, the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant is essential to Ukraine’s energy industry. It has six reactors and produces a sizable amount of the nation’s electricity, making it a dependable and sustainable source of energy.
