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The Zaporizhzhia complex is the largest nuclear power plant not only in Ukraine, but also in Europe. (Photo: Dmytro Smolyenko/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Russian troops in Ukraine seized Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant Friday after shelling set part of the complex on fire, ringing alarm bells around the world of a potential nuclear disaster.
None of the reactors were built to withstand a military assault.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of waging “nuclear terror” by attacking the plant deliberately and warned of the potential for another Chernobyl-like catastrophe, which took place in northern Ukraine in 1986 when the country was still part of the Soviet Union.
Plant personnel are operating the 5,700-megawatt, six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant under “gunpoint,” according to Ukrainian nuclear officials, and local authorities confirmed that the fire was extinguished around 6:20 a.m. local time (11:20 p.m. on the U.S. East Coast) after burning for nearly five hours.
Fortunately, the fire was confined to a training facility and apparently did not damage the plant’s safety systems, and there was no release of radioactive material, according to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, the threat posed by Russia’s occupation of the plant, located about 342 miles southeast of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, has not by any means dissipated.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is just one of four Ukrainian nuclear facilities whose 15 reactors provide more than half of the country’s electricity. None of the reactors were built to withstand a military assault. Although there is no way to know if Russia intentionally targeted Zaporizhzhia, all of the plants are also vulnerable to indirect fire that could damage critical support systems and surrounding infrastructure, potentially resulting in a fuel meltdown and a radiological release that could contaminate thousands of square miles of terrain.
As the situation on the ground unfolds, there are four major issues to keep in mind about the risks facing Ukraine’s nuclear sites in the midst of a war:
Nuclear fuel requires constant cooling
Water-cooled nuclear power plants such as the reactors at Zaporizhzhia utilize the intense heat produced by the fission of nuclear fuel to convert water into steam, which then spins turbines to generate electricity. Under normal operation, electrically powered cooling systems remove the heat by pumping water through the reactor core. If the cooling is interrupted, the fuel can heat up within a matter of hours to a temperature at which it can become damaged and begin to release highly radioactive fission products. If adequate cooling is not ultimately restored, the fuel can melt through the steel reactor vessel and--in the most severe situation--the containment structure can leak or rupture, releasing fission products to the environment.
This sequence of events occurred at three of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan in 2011. At Fukushima, an enormous earthquake disrupted the electrical grid that provided the power to run its cooling systems, and the tsunami that followed the earthquake flooded the site, disabling the emergency diesel generators and electrical distribution systems needed to provide backup power in the event that onsite power is lost. Despite the best efforts of plant personnel working under dire conditions and using whatever means were at hand, including car batteries and fire trucks, they were unable to restore sufficient cooling to prevent the three meltdowns. Hydrogen generated by the reaction of the fuel’s metal cladding with water accumulated to dangerous levels, resulting in hydrogen explosions that breached the confinements of two of the reactors and allowed more radioactive material to escape.
It’s important to note that even if a reactor is safely shut down and no longer generating electricity--which was the case at Fukushima--the fuel remains hot enough to damage itself if cooling is not sufficient. Nuclear reactors have pools on site to store used, or “spent,” nuclear fuel underwater, often in densely packed configurations. Like a reactor core, these pools require electrically powered cooling systems, although if cooling is lost there will typically be more time for plant operators to prevent fuel damage than with a reactor core. But for both reactors and spent fuel pools, reliable, long-term backup power is critical.
The Ukrainian plants’ spent fuel cooling pools are adjacent to the reactor vessel in the containment building, but they are smaller than pools at U.S. plants.
Ukrainian plants are prepared for accidents, but not military attacks
There are a number of events that could trigger a worst-case scenario involving a reactor core or spent fuel pool located in a war zone: An accidental--or intentional--strike could directly damage one or more reactors. An upstream dam failure could flood a reactor downstream. A fire could disable plant electrical systems. Personnel under duress could make serious mistakes. The bottom line: Any extended loss of power that interrupted cooling system operations that personnel could not contain has the potential to cause a Fukushima-like disaster.
This danger is partly offset by the measures many countries required in the aftermath of Fukushima to strengthen the ability of nuclear plants to cope with accidents, known as station blackouts, involving long-term losses of both offsite power and onsite emergency diesel generators. Plant owners acquired additional equipment to provide emergency cooling, including portable diesel generators and diesel-powered fire pumps, and developed strategies to use them. However, these measures only work if the equipment is available and functional when needed, and plant personnel are capable of setting them up in time. Thus, this emergency equipment must survive whatever event disables installed (non-portable) plant equipment, and personnel must be able to get the equipment where it needs to go.
Nuclear plants have to ensure this post-Fukushima safety equipment can survive extreme weather events and earthquakes, but it is unlikely that they have “hardened” it enough to survive a major military assault. Each of the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia has three emergency diesel generators and there are two additional generators shared by Units 5 and 6. That configuration is more protective than the U.S. requirement for only two emergency diesel generators per reactor unit. Ukraine requires nuclear plants to store sufficient fuel to operate the generators for seven days, the same as in the United States.
While redundant safety systems are necessary, they are not sufficient. There is always a risk of “common-mode” failures that affect all redundant equipment in the same way, so plants also need diverse backup systems. At Zaporizhzhia, there are additional options for restoring power, including connections to local hydroelectric plants and a thermal power plant. And if plant operators cannot restore power through normal means, then they would have to resort to using the 16 on-site mobile pumping units (fire engines) that the site obtained during its post-Fukushima upgrade. However, the likely availability and reliability of these units, especially under attack conditions, is unknown.
Plant operators’ health and safety is a major concern
Another issue that has become glaringly apparent is the fate of nuclear facility personnel when their workplace is seized by a hostile power. The takeover of the Chernobyl site on February 24 resulted in a situation where, as the Ukrainian government reported in a March 2 letter, Russian occupiers have kept plant operators at the site for a week without a new shift to relieve them, are subjecting them “to psychological pressure and moral exhaustion,” and giving them “limited opportunities to communicate, move, and carry out full-fledged maintenance and repair work....” This dangerous situation raises the question of how shift turnover could be accomplished--that is, whether offsite personnel would be willing or able to report to work under such conditions. A prolonged inability to bring in fresh replacements would obviously impair the ability of the onsite staff to get enough rest to do their jobs effectively.
Although Chernobyl, which has no operating reactors, does have a spent nuclear fuel storage pool requiring attention, the problem of staff turnover will be more acute at operating nuclear plants such as Zaporizhzhia, which--given Ukraine’s reliance on nuclear power--likely cannot afford to be out of commission for more than a short time. And even if the country did shut them down, they would still require a significant complement of operations and maintenance personnel to manage the reactors and spent fuel storage facilities. Plant staff would experience fatigue on top of stress, which could lead to serious mistakes in running the reactors. If Russia takes over the plants, it may have no other choice but to bring in its own personnel to take over plant operation.
A Ukrainian meltdown would not be another Chernobyl
As Chernobyl so graphically demonstrated, a nuclear accident in Ukraine has the potential not only to contaminate Ukrainian territory, but also Belarus, Russia, and much of the rest of Europe. Although also Soviet-designed, the VVER-1000 light-water reactors in Ukraine, such as the six at Zaporizhzhia, are fundamentally different from the Chernobyl design. They are not as vulnerable to the particular sequence of events, including a massive steam explosion and long-duration fire, that made Chernobyl so severe and led to the wide dispersal of radioactivity over both Eastern and Western Europe, and even caused detectable levels in much of the Northern Hemisphere.
The consequences of a nuclear accident at one of the four operational Ukrainian nuclear plants could be similar to that of Fukushima, however. Multiple reactors could experience a loss of cooling and core damage without necessarily causing the major confinement breach that occurred at Chernobyl. The most significant land contamination from Fukushima extended at most some 25 miles from the site. Because of Fukushima’s location on the coast, however, 80 percent of the radioactive material the disaster released into the atmosphere is believed to have drifted over the ocean, which would not be the case at Ukraine’s land-locked plants. And even local contamination could greatly complicate the ability of Ukrainian authorities to care for both its civilian population and its troops.
After Fukushima, reactor owners worldwide also made plant modifications and developed plans to mitigate any radioactive releases that could occur after a core-melt accident. At Zaporizhzhia, operators installed systems in some of the reactors to neutralize hydrogen gas that could be released into the containment, but such systems generally cannot cope with high rates of hydrogen formation. Ukrainian authorities also determined that it would be appropriate for plants to install filtered vents to allow operators to reduce containment pressure without releasing large quantities of radioactive materials, but implementation has been slow. Other vulnerabilities, such as the potential for containment bypass in VVER-1000s in the event of a core melt accident, are even more difficult to address.
What can be done? From a safety perspective, the best-case scenario would be for Russia and Ukraine to establish “safe zones” around nuclear plants, modeled after the temporary “humanitarian corridors” that the two sides have agreed to create. In addition, Ukraine and Russia should negotiate an agreement to protect plant personnel and allow safe shift changes as well as emergency preparedness and response activities.
Let’s hope cooler heads prevail.
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Russian troops in Ukraine seized Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant Friday after shelling set part of the complex on fire, ringing alarm bells around the world of a potential nuclear disaster.
None of the reactors were built to withstand a military assault.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of waging “nuclear terror” by attacking the plant deliberately and warned of the potential for another Chernobyl-like catastrophe, which took place in northern Ukraine in 1986 when the country was still part of the Soviet Union.
Plant personnel are operating the 5,700-megawatt, six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant under “gunpoint,” according to Ukrainian nuclear officials, and local authorities confirmed that the fire was extinguished around 6:20 a.m. local time (11:20 p.m. on the U.S. East Coast) after burning for nearly five hours.
Fortunately, the fire was confined to a training facility and apparently did not damage the plant’s safety systems, and there was no release of radioactive material, according to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, the threat posed by Russia’s occupation of the plant, located about 342 miles southeast of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, has not by any means dissipated.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is just one of four Ukrainian nuclear facilities whose 15 reactors provide more than half of the country’s electricity. None of the reactors were built to withstand a military assault. Although there is no way to know if Russia intentionally targeted Zaporizhzhia, all of the plants are also vulnerable to indirect fire that could damage critical support systems and surrounding infrastructure, potentially resulting in a fuel meltdown and a radiological release that could contaminate thousands of square miles of terrain.
As the situation on the ground unfolds, there are four major issues to keep in mind about the risks facing Ukraine’s nuclear sites in the midst of a war:
Nuclear fuel requires constant cooling
Water-cooled nuclear power plants such as the reactors at Zaporizhzhia utilize the intense heat produced by the fission of nuclear fuel to convert water into steam, which then spins turbines to generate electricity. Under normal operation, electrically powered cooling systems remove the heat by pumping water through the reactor core. If the cooling is interrupted, the fuel can heat up within a matter of hours to a temperature at which it can become damaged and begin to release highly radioactive fission products. If adequate cooling is not ultimately restored, the fuel can melt through the steel reactor vessel and--in the most severe situation--the containment structure can leak or rupture, releasing fission products to the environment.
This sequence of events occurred at three of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan in 2011. At Fukushima, an enormous earthquake disrupted the electrical grid that provided the power to run its cooling systems, and the tsunami that followed the earthquake flooded the site, disabling the emergency diesel generators and electrical distribution systems needed to provide backup power in the event that onsite power is lost. Despite the best efforts of plant personnel working under dire conditions and using whatever means were at hand, including car batteries and fire trucks, they were unable to restore sufficient cooling to prevent the three meltdowns. Hydrogen generated by the reaction of the fuel’s metal cladding with water accumulated to dangerous levels, resulting in hydrogen explosions that breached the confinements of two of the reactors and allowed more radioactive material to escape.
It’s important to note that even if a reactor is safely shut down and no longer generating electricity--which was the case at Fukushima--the fuel remains hot enough to damage itself if cooling is not sufficient. Nuclear reactors have pools on site to store used, or “spent,” nuclear fuel underwater, often in densely packed configurations. Like a reactor core, these pools require electrically powered cooling systems, although if cooling is lost there will typically be more time for plant operators to prevent fuel damage than with a reactor core. But for both reactors and spent fuel pools, reliable, long-term backup power is critical.
The Ukrainian plants’ spent fuel cooling pools are adjacent to the reactor vessel in the containment building, but they are smaller than pools at U.S. plants.
Ukrainian plants are prepared for accidents, but not military attacks
There are a number of events that could trigger a worst-case scenario involving a reactor core or spent fuel pool located in a war zone: An accidental--or intentional--strike could directly damage one or more reactors. An upstream dam failure could flood a reactor downstream. A fire could disable plant electrical systems. Personnel under duress could make serious mistakes. The bottom line: Any extended loss of power that interrupted cooling system operations that personnel could not contain has the potential to cause a Fukushima-like disaster.
This danger is partly offset by the measures many countries required in the aftermath of Fukushima to strengthen the ability of nuclear plants to cope with accidents, known as station blackouts, involving long-term losses of both offsite power and onsite emergency diesel generators. Plant owners acquired additional equipment to provide emergency cooling, including portable diesel generators and diesel-powered fire pumps, and developed strategies to use them. However, these measures only work if the equipment is available and functional when needed, and plant personnel are capable of setting them up in time. Thus, this emergency equipment must survive whatever event disables installed (non-portable) plant equipment, and personnel must be able to get the equipment where it needs to go.
Nuclear plants have to ensure this post-Fukushima safety equipment can survive extreme weather events and earthquakes, but it is unlikely that they have “hardened” it enough to survive a major military assault. Each of the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia has three emergency diesel generators and there are two additional generators shared by Units 5 and 6. That configuration is more protective than the U.S. requirement for only two emergency diesel generators per reactor unit. Ukraine requires nuclear plants to store sufficient fuel to operate the generators for seven days, the same as in the United States.
While redundant safety systems are necessary, they are not sufficient. There is always a risk of “common-mode” failures that affect all redundant equipment in the same way, so plants also need diverse backup systems. At Zaporizhzhia, there are additional options for restoring power, including connections to local hydroelectric plants and a thermal power plant. And if plant operators cannot restore power through normal means, then they would have to resort to using the 16 on-site mobile pumping units (fire engines) that the site obtained during its post-Fukushima upgrade. However, the likely availability and reliability of these units, especially under attack conditions, is unknown.
Plant operators’ health and safety is a major concern
Another issue that has become glaringly apparent is the fate of nuclear facility personnel when their workplace is seized by a hostile power. The takeover of the Chernobyl site on February 24 resulted in a situation where, as the Ukrainian government reported in a March 2 letter, Russian occupiers have kept plant operators at the site for a week without a new shift to relieve them, are subjecting them “to psychological pressure and moral exhaustion,” and giving them “limited opportunities to communicate, move, and carry out full-fledged maintenance and repair work....” This dangerous situation raises the question of how shift turnover could be accomplished--that is, whether offsite personnel would be willing or able to report to work under such conditions. A prolonged inability to bring in fresh replacements would obviously impair the ability of the onsite staff to get enough rest to do their jobs effectively.
Although Chernobyl, which has no operating reactors, does have a spent nuclear fuel storage pool requiring attention, the problem of staff turnover will be more acute at operating nuclear plants such as Zaporizhzhia, which--given Ukraine’s reliance on nuclear power--likely cannot afford to be out of commission for more than a short time. And even if the country did shut them down, they would still require a significant complement of operations and maintenance personnel to manage the reactors and spent fuel storage facilities. Plant staff would experience fatigue on top of stress, which could lead to serious mistakes in running the reactors. If Russia takes over the plants, it may have no other choice but to bring in its own personnel to take over plant operation.
A Ukrainian meltdown would not be another Chernobyl
As Chernobyl so graphically demonstrated, a nuclear accident in Ukraine has the potential not only to contaminate Ukrainian territory, but also Belarus, Russia, and much of the rest of Europe. Although also Soviet-designed, the VVER-1000 light-water reactors in Ukraine, such as the six at Zaporizhzhia, are fundamentally different from the Chernobyl design. They are not as vulnerable to the particular sequence of events, including a massive steam explosion and long-duration fire, that made Chernobyl so severe and led to the wide dispersal of radioactivity over both Eastern and Western Europe, and even caused detectable levels in much of the Northern Hemisphere.
The consequences of a nuclear accident at one of the four operational Ukrainian nuclear plants could be similar to that of Fukushima, however. Multiple reactors could experience a loss of cooling and core damage without necessarily causing the major confinement breach that occurred at Chernobyl. The most significant land contamination from Fukushima extended at most some 25 miles from the site. Because of Fukushima’s location on the coast, however, 80 percent of the radioactive material the disaster released into the atmosphere is believed to have drifted over the ocean, which would not be the case at Ukraine’s land-locked plants. And even local contamination could greatly complicate the ability of Ukrainian authorities to care for both its civilian population and its troops.
After Fukushima, reactor owners worldwide also made plant modifications and developed plans to mitigate any radioactive releases that could occur after a core-melt accident. At Zaporizhzhia, operators installed systems in some of the reactors to neutralize hydrogen gas that could be released into the containment, but such systems generally cannot cope with high rates of hydrogen formation. Ukrainian authorities also determined that it would be appropriate for plants to install filtered vents to allow operators to reduce containment pressure without releasing large quantities of radioactive materials, but implementation has been slow. Other vulnerabilities, such as the potential for containment bypass in VVER-1000s in the event of a core melt accident, are even more difficult to address.
What can be done? From a safety perspective, the best-case scenario would be for Russia and Ukraine to establish “safe zones” around nuclear plants, modeled after the temporary “humanitarian corridors” that the two sides have agreed to create. In addition, Ukraine and Russia should negotiate an agreement to protect plant personnel and allow safe shift changes as well as emergency preparedness and response activities.
Let’s hope cooler heads prevail.
Russian troops in Ukraine seized Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant Friday after shelling set part of the complex on fire, ringing alarm bells around the world of a potential nuclear disaster.
None of the reactors were built to withstand a military assault.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of waging “nuclear terror” by attacking the plant deliberately and warned of the potential for another Chernobyl-like catastrophe, which took place in northern Ukraine in 1986 when the country was still part of the Soviet Union.
Plant personnel are operating the 5,700-megawatt, six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant under “gunpoint,” according to Ukrainian nuclear officials, and local authorities confirmed that the fire was extinguished around 6:20 a.m. local time (11:20 p.m. on the U.S. East Coast) after burning for nearly five hours.
Fortunately, the fire was confined to a training facility and apparently did not damage the plant’s safety systems, and there was no release of radioactive material, according to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, the threat posed by Russia’s occupation of the plant, located about 342 miles southeast of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, has not by any means dissipated.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is just one of four Ukrainian nuclear facilities whose 15 reactors provide more than half of the country’s electricity. None of the reactors were built to withstand a military assault. Although there is no way to know if Russia intentionally targeted Zaporizhzhia, all of the plants are also vulnerable to indirect fire that could damage critical support systems and surrounding infrastructure, potentially resulting in a fuel meltdown and a radiological release that could contaminate thousands of square miles of terrain.
As the situation on the ground unfolds, there are four major issues to keep in mind about the risks facing Ukraine’s nuclear sites in the midst of a war:
Nuclear fuel requires constant cooling
Water-cooled nuclear power plants such as the reactors at Zaporizhzhia utilize the intense heat produced by the fission of nuclear fuel to convert water into steam, which then spins turbines to generate electricity. Under normal operation, electrically powered cooling systems remove the heat by pumping water through the reactor core. If the cooling is interrupted, the fuel can heat up within a matter of hours to a temperature at which it can become damaged and begin to release highly radioactive fission products. If adequate cooling is not ultimately restored, the fuel can melt through the steel reactor vessel and--in the most severe situation--the containment structure can leak or rupture, releasing fission products to the environment.
This sequence of events occurred at three of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan in 2011. At Fukushima, an enormous earthquake disrupted the electrical grid that provided the power to run its cooling systems, and the tsunami that followed the earthquake flooded the site, disabling the emergency diesel generators and electrical distribution systems needed to provide backup power in the event that onsite power is lost. Despite the best efforts of plant personnel working under dire conditions and using whatever means were at hand, including car batteries and fire trucks, they were unable to restore sufficient cooling to prevent the three meltdowns. Hydrogen generated by the reaction of the fuel’s metal cladding with water accumulated to dangerous levels, resulting in hydrogen explosions that breached the confinements of two of the reactors and allowed more radioactive material to escape.
It’s important to note that even if a reactor is safely shut down and no longer generating electricity--which was the case at Fukushima--the fuel remains hot enough to damage itself if cooling is not sufficient. Nuclear reactors have pools on site to store used, or “spent,” nuclear fuel underwater, often in densely packed configurations. Like a reactor core, these pools require electrically powered cooling systems, although if cooling is lost there will typically be more time for plant operators to prevent fuel damage than with a reactor core. But for both reactors and spent fuel pools, reliable, long-term backup power is critical.
The Ukrainian plants’ spent fuel cooling pools are adjacent to the reactor vessel in the containment building, but they are smaller than pools at U.S. plants.
Ukrainian plants are prepared for accidents, but not military attacks
There are a number of events that could trigger a worst-case scenario involving a reactor core or spent fuel pool located in a war zone: An accidental--or intentional--strike could directly damage one or more reactors. An upstream dam failure could flood a reactor downstream. A fire could disable plant electrical systems. Personnel under duress could make serious mistakes. The bottom line: Any extended loss of power that interrupted cooling system operations that personnel could not contain has the potential to cause a Fukushima-like disaster.
This danger is partly offset by the measures many countries required in the aftermath of Fukushima to strengthen the ability of nuclear plants to cope with accidents, known as station blackouts, involving long-term losses of both offsite power and onsite emergency diesel generators. Plant owners acquired additional equipment to provide emergency cooling, including portable diesel generators and diesel-powered fire pumps, and developed strategies to use them. However, these measures only work if the equipment is available and functional when needed, and plant personnel are capable of setting them up in time. Thus, this emergency equipment must survive whatever event disables installed (non-portable) plant equipment, and personnel must be able to get the equipment where it needs to go.
Nuclear plants have to ensure this post-Fukushima safety equipment can survive extreme weather events and earthquakes, but it is unlikely that they have “hardened” it enough to survive a major military assault. Each of the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia has three emergency diesel generators and there are two additional generators shared by Units 5 and 6. That configuration is more protective than the U.S. requirement for only two emergency diesel generators per reactor unit. Ukraine requires nuclear plants to store sufficient fuel to operate the generators for seven days, the same as in the United States.
While redundant safety systems are necessary, they are not sufficient. There is always a risk of “common-mode” failures that affect all redundant equipment in the same way, so plants also need diverse backup systems. At Zaporizhzhia, there are additional options for restoring power, including connections to local hydroelectric plants and a thermal power plant. And if plant operators cannot restore power through normal means, then they would have to resort to using the 16 on-site mobile pumping units (fire engines) that the site obtained during its post-Fukushima upgrade. However, the likely availability and reliability of these units, especially under attack conditions, is unknown.
Plant operators’ health and safety is a major concern
Another issue that has become glaringly apparent is the fate of nuclear facility personnel when their workplace is seized by a hostile power. The takeover of the Chernobyl site on February 24 resulted in a situation where, as the Ukrainian government reported in a March 2 letter, Russian occupiers have kept plant operators at the site for a week without a new shift to relieve them, are subjecting them “to psychological pressure and moral exhaustion,” and giving them “limited opportunities to communicate, move, and carry out full-fledged maintenance and repair work....” This dangerous situation raises the question of how shift turnover could be accomplished--that is, whether offsite personnel would be willing or able to report to work under such conditions. A prolonged inability to bring in fresh replacements would obviously impair the ability of the onsite staff to get enough rest to do their jobs effectively.
Although Chernobyl, which has no operating reactors, does have a spent nuclear fuel storage pool requiring attention, the problem of staff turnover will be more acute at operating nuclear plants such as Zaporizhzhia, which--given Ukraine’s reliance on nuclear power--likely cannot afford to be out of commission for more than a short time. And even if the country did shut them down, they would still require a significant complement of operations and maintenance personnel to manage the reactors and spent fuel storage facilities. Plant staff would experience fatigue on top of stress, which could lead to serious mistakes in running the reactors. If Russia takes over the plants, it may have no other choice but to bring in its own personnel to take over plant operation.
A Ukrainian meltdown would not be another Chernobyl
As Chernobyl so graphically demonstrated, a nuclear accident in Ukraine has the potential not only to contaminate Ukrainian territory, but also Belarus, Russia, and much of the rest of Europe. Although also Soviet-designed, the VVER-1000 light-water reactors in Ukraine, such as the six at Zaporizhzhia, are fundamentally different from the Chernobyl design. They are not as vulnerable to the particular sequence of events, including a massive steam explosion and long-duration fire, that made Chernobyl so severe and led to the wide dispersal of radioactivity over both Eastern and Western Europe, and even caused detectable levels in much of the Northern Hemisphere.
The consequences of a nuclear accident at one of the four operational Ukrainian nuclear plants could be similar to that of Fukushima, however. Multiple reactors could experience a loss of cooling and core damage without necessarily causing the major confinement breach that occurred at Chernobyl. The most significant land contamination from Fukushima extended at most some 25 miles from the site. Because of Fukushima’s location on the coast, however, 80 percent of the radioactive material the disaster released into the atmosphere is believed to have drifted over the ocean, which would not be the case at Ukraine’s land-locked plants. And even local contamination could greatly complicate the ability of Ukrainian authorities to care for both its civilian population and its troops.
After Fukushima, reactor owners worldwide also made plant modifications and developed plans to mitigate any radioactive releases that could occur after a core-melt accident. At Zaporizhzhia, operators installed systems in some of the reactors to neutralize hydrogen gas that could be released into the containment, but such systems generally cannot cope with high rates of hydrogen formation. Ukrainian authorities also determined that it would be appropriate for plants to install filtered vents to allow operators to reduce containment pressure without releasing large quantities of radioactive materials, but implementation has been slow. Other vulnerabilities, such as the potential for containment bypass in VVER-1000s in the event of a core melt accident, are even more difficult to address.
What can be done? From a safety perspective, the best-case scenario would be for Russia and Ukraine to establish “safe zones” around nuclear plants, modeled after the temporary “humanitarian corridors” that the two sides have agreed to create. In addition, Ukraine and Russia should negotiate an agreement to protect plant personnel and allow safe shift changes as well as emergency preparedness and response activities.
Let’s hope cooler heads prevail.
Against a backdrop of Israel's genocidal obliteration of Gaza City and a worsening man-made famine throughout the embattled Palestinian exclave, the United States on Thursday cast its sixth United Nations Security Council veto of a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas.
At its 10,000th meeting, the UN Security Council voted 14-1 with no abstentions in favor of a resolution proposed by the 10 nonpermanent UNSC members demanding "an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire" in Gaza, the "release of all hostages" held by Hamas, and for Israel to "immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid" into the besieged strip.
Morgan Ortagus, President Donald Trump's deputy special envoy to the Middle East, vetoed the proposal, saying that the move "will come as no surprise," as the US has killed five previous UNSC Gaza ceasefire resolutions under both the Biden and Trump administrations, most recently in June.
Ortagus said the resolution failed to condemn Hamas or affirm Israel's right to self-defense and “wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefiting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council."
The US has unconditionally provided Israel with billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover since October 2023 as the key Mideast ally wages a war increasingly viewed as genocidal, including by a commission of independent UN experts this week.
Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said the torpedoed resolution represented the "bare minimum" that must be accomplished, adding that “it is deeply regrettable and painful that it has been blocked.”
“Babies dying of starvation, snipers shooting people in the head, civilians killed en masse, families displaced again and again... humanitarians and journalists targeted... while Israeli officials are openly mocking all of this," Mansour added.
Following the UNSC's latest failure to pass a ceasefire resolution, Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama asked Gazans to "forgive" the body for not only its inability to approve such measures, but also for failing to stop the Gaza famine, in which at least hundreds of Palestinians have died and hundreds of thousands more are starving. Every UNSC members but the US concurred last month that the Gaza famine is a man-made catastrophe.
“Israel kills every day and nothing happens," Bendjama said. "Israel starves a people and nothing happens. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, shelters, and nothing happens. Israel attacks a mediator and steps on diplomacy, and nothing happens. And with every act, every act unpunished, humanity itself is diminished.”
Benjama also asked Gazans to "forgive us" for failing to protect children in the strip, more than 20,000 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockade over the past 713 days. He also noted that upward of 12,000 women, 4,000 elderly, 1,400 doctors and nurses, 500 aid workers, and 250 journalists “have been killed by Israel."
Condemning Thursday's veto, Hamas accused the US of “blatant complicity in the crime of genocide," which Israel is accused of committing in an ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) case filed in December 2023 by South Africa and backed by around two dozen nations.
Hamas—which led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and is believed to be holding 20 hostages left alive out of 251 people kidnapped that day—implored the countries that sponsored the ceasefire resolution to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who along with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, to accept an agreement to halt hostilities.
Overall, at least 65,141 Palestinians have been killed and over 165,900 others wounded by Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose figures have not only been confirmed by former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, but deemed a significant undercount by independent researchers. Thousands more Gazans are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the ruins of the flattened strip.
UK Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward stessed after Thursday's failed UNSC resolution that "we need a ceasefire more than ever."
“Israel’s reckless expansion of its military operation takes us further away from a deal which could bring the hostages home and end the suffering in Gaza," Woodward said.
Thursday's developments came as Israeli forces continued to lay waste to Gaza City as they push deeper into the city as part of Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians from the strip's capital. Israeli leaders have said they are carrying out the operation in accordance with Trump's proposal to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform it into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
In what some observers said was a bid to prevent the world from witnessing fresh Israeli war crimes in Gaza City, internet and phone lines were cut off in the strip Thursday, although officials said service has since been mostly restored.
Gaza officials said Thursday that at least 50 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces since dawn, including 40 in Gaza City, which Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum said is being pummeled into "a lifeless wasteland."
Azzoum reported that tens of thousands of Palestinians "are moving to the south on foot or in carts, looking for any place that is relatively safe—but with no guarantee of safety—or at least for shelter."
Israel has repeatedly bombed areas it advised Palestinians were "safe zones," including a September 2 airstrike that massacred 11 people—nine of them children—queued up to collect water in al-Mawasi.
"Most families who have arrived in the south have not found space," Azzoum added. "That’s why we’ve seen people setting up makeshift tents close to the water while others are left stranded in the street, living under the open sky."
President Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to silence his critics Thursday, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that outlets that give him "bad press" may have their broadcast licenses taken away.
The threat came just one day after his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) director, Brendan Carr, successfully pressured ABC into pulling Jimmy Kimmel's show from the air by threatening the broadcast licenses of its affiliates over a comment the comedian made about the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
"I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me," Trump told the press gaggle. "I get 97% negative, and yet I won it easily. I won all seven swing states, popular vote, I won everything. And they're 97% against, they give me wholly bad publicity... I mean, they're getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away."
"When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do," the president continued. "If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said, but when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”
He said that the decision would be left up to Carr, who has threatened to take away licenses from networks that air what he called "distorted" content.
It is unclear where Trump's statistic that networks have been "97% against" him originates, nor the claim that mainstream news networks "haven't had a conservative on in years."
But even if it were true, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez says "the FCC doesn't have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to revoke a license because of content."
In comments made to Axios Thursday, Gomez—the lone Democrat on the five-member panel—said that the Trump administration was "weaponizing its licensing authority in order to bring broadcasters to heel," as part of a "campaign of censorship and control."
National news networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC do not have broadcasting licenses approved by the FCC, nor do cable networks like CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. The licenses threatened by Carr are for local affiliates, which—despite having the branding of the big networks—are owned by less well-known companies like Nexstar Media Group and the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, both of which pushed in favor of ABC's decision to ax Kimmel.
Gomez said that with Trump's intimidation of broadcasters, the "threat is the point."
"It is a very hard standard to meet to revoke a license, which is why it's so rarely done, but broadcast license to the broadcasters are extremely valuable," she said. "And so they don't want to be dragged before the FCC either in order to answer to an enforcement complaint of some kind or under the threat of possible revocation."
Democratic lawmakers are vowing to investigate the Trump administration's pressure campaign that may have led to ABC deciding to indefinitely suspend late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced on Thursday that he filed a motion to subpoena Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr one day after he publicly warned ABC of negative consequences if the network kept Kimmel on the air.
"Enough of Congress sleepwalking while [President Donald] Trump and [Vice President JD] Vance shred the First Amendment and Constitution," Khanna declared. "It is time for Congress to stand up for Article I."
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, also said on Thursday that he was opening an investigation into the potential financial aspects of Carr's pressure campaign on ABC, including the involvement of Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is the network's largest affiliate and is currently involved in merger talks that will need FCC approval.
"The Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into ABC, Sinclair, and the FCC," he said. "We will not be intimidated and we will defend the First Amendment."
Progressive politicians weren't the only ones launching an investigation into the Kimmel controversy, as legal organization Democracy Forward announced that it's filed a a Freedom of Information Act request for records after January 20, 2025 related to any FCC efforts “to use the agency’s licensing and enforcement powers to police and limit speech and influence what the public can watch and hear.”