Power has been completely cut off at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, Ukraine's energy operator Ukrenergo said on Wednesday, but monitoring groups and experts saw little risk of a major incident.
Russian forces took control of the site after they invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
In a statement, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it saw no "critical impact on essential safety functions" at the site but said that the development violated a key pillar meant to ensure safety at nuclear power plants.
"Regarding the site’s spent fuel storage facility, the volume of cooling water in the pool is sufficient to maintain effective heat removal from the spent fuel without a supply of electricity," the IAEA said in a statement. "The site also has reserve emergency power supplies with diesel generators and batteries."
Ukrenergo, in a statement on its Facebook page, had earlier warned that backup generators could provide power for up to 48 hours and said there was "no possibility" of restoring external power due to military activity in the area. Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine's foreign minister, called for a cease-fire allowing for repairs.
Safecast, an independent radiation monitoring organization, said it agreed with several experts that there was no near-term worry.
"Make no doubt, we're in uncharted territory, and the situation is ripe for mistakes. Chernobyl NPP is in a vulnerable state and the situation could easily deteriorate further. But we're focusing on supporting efforts to restore monitoring and oversight," Safecast said in a Tweet.
The IAEA also said the situation at the plant remained concerning.
“From day to day, we are seeing a worsening situation ... especially for radiation safety, and for the staff managing the facility under extremely difficult and challenging circumstances,” Director-General Rafael Grossi said in the statement. “I repeat my urgent appeal to the forces in effective control of the plant to respect internal radiation protection procedures, to facilitate the safe rotation of staff and to take other important steps to ensure safety.”
Karine Herviou, deputy director-general of France's nuclear safety institute IRSN, told the AFP news agency that even if power isn't restored in 48 hours, "from what we know of the installations, there isn't a danger of radioactive emissions."
She referred to studies following the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima that suggested temperatures could rise to around 60 degrees Celsius but that fuel rods would not be uncovered.
A power outage at an active plant would "cause more problems," Herviou told the agency.
"There you would absolutely have to ensure the cooling of the fuel in the reactor core or in the cooling pools," she told AFP.
The IAEA also said that it had lost remote data from monitoring systems at Chernobyl and the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant — which was seized by Russian forces last week after a firefight.
“The remote transmission of data from IAEA safeguards equipment located at nuclear sites around the world is an important component of our safeguards implementation, in Ukraine and globally,” Grossi said. “Such systems are installed in several facilities in Ukraine, including all nuclear power plants, and enable us to monitor nuclear material and activities at these sites when our inspectors are not present.”
Eight of Ukraine's 15 nuclear plants remained online as of Wednesday, the IAEA said, adding that radiation levels were normal.
The disaster at the now-defunct Chernobyl plant in 1986 left hundreds dead and spread radioactive contamination across Europe. The plant sits inside an exclusion zone that houses decommissioned reactors as well as radioactive waste facilities.
More than 2,000 staff still work at the plant as it requires constant management to prevent another nuclear disaster.
Since Russia began its invasion, the IAEA's Grossi called for extreme caution over Ukraine's nuclear plants.
"This time, if there is a nuclear accident, the cause will not be a tsunami brought on by Mother Nature," he told an IAEA meeting earlier this week, alluding to the cause of the Fukushima disaster. "Instead, it will be the result of human failure to act when we knew we could, and we knew we should."
Information from AFP-Jiji added
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