On Wednesday, Ukraine requested a temporary ceasefire from Russia in order to repair a power line to the Chernobyl nuclear power facility, warning that if the power loss continued, a radiation leak may occur.
Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear power plant According to Energoatom, fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces has made it impossible to repair the high-voltage power connection to the plant, which has been captured by Russian forces, immediately.
Energoatom warned that radioactive compounds could be spilled if the facility’s spent nuclear fuel could not be cooled, and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba claimed reserve diesel generators could only operate the reactor for 48 hours.
“After that, the cooling systems of the spent nuclear fuel storage facility will stop, making radiation leakage inevitable,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
“I encourage the world community to press Russia to stop firing and allow repair units to restore power supplies.”
According to the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the loss of power has no significant impact on safety.
The IAEA stated in a statement that “the heat load of the spent fuel storage pool and the volume of cooling water at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant are sufficient for effective heat removal without the requirement for electrical supply.”
However, Energoatom stated that there were approximately 20,000 spent fuel assemblies at Chernobyl that could not be kept cold during a power loss and that their warming may result in a disaster “radioactive compounds are released into the environment
Wind might carry the radioactive cloud to other parts of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Europe “It was stated in a statement.
Without power, the plant’s ventilation systems would also be inoperable, exposing workers to deadly levels of radiation, according to the statement.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a warning on Tuesday that the equipment monitoring nuclear material at Chernobyl’s radioactive waste plants had ceased transmitting data. more info
The site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, which is still radioactive, is around 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Kyiv.
Its fourth reactor detonated following a failed safety test in April 1986, sending clouds of radiation sweeping across much of Europe.
