A month after the terrorist attack. How the occupants’ explosion of Kakhovka HPP affected the operation of ZNPP
On the night of June 6, the Russian occupiers blew up the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant. Large amounts of water flooded dozens of settlements, killing dozens of people and hundreds of animals. The explosion of the hydroelectric power plant caused one of the largest environmental disasters in Europe. Equally important, the water from the Kakhovka reservoir was used to feed the turbine condensers and safety systems of the Zaporizhzhia NPP. What is the current situation at ZNPP and whether there is a threat of the occupants blowing up the nuclear power plant, read in the Fakty ICTV article.
Explosion of Kakhovka HPP
At about 2:50 am on June 6, 2023, explosions were heard at the Kakhovka HPP. The occupiers accused Ukraine of blowing up the dam, but Ukrainian intelligence has irrefutable evidence that the Russians planned and prepared for the explosion. They mined the dam’s pillars, as well as the engine room and other facilities.
In a telephone conversation intercepted by the SBU, one of the occupants tells the other that Russia wanted to blackmail Ukraine by blowing up the dam. And it was the aggressor country that organized the man-made disaster in the southern regions of our country.
The situation at ZNPP
After the occupiers blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi visited the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to assess the situation.
Later, Grossi stated that the explosion of the Kakhovka HPP had created an additional danger to the operation of the ZNPP.
– The nuclear safety situation at Zaporizhzhya NPP is extremely unstable. “The loss of the Kakhovka reservoir was a disaster for the region and also added serious difficulties for this large nuclear power plant,” Grossi said.
Occupants are preparing a sabotage at Zaporizhzhya NPP
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine warns that Russia may soon resort to provocations at Zaporizhzhia NPP.
According to the military’s intelligence, on July 4, foreign objects resembling explosive devices were placed on the outer roof of the plant’s third and fourth power units.
On the same day, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on the international community to respond to the situation to prevent a possible explosion at the plant.
– Now the whole world must be aware that common security is completely dependent on global attention to the actions of the occupiers at the plant. Russia must clearly realize that the world sees what scenarios terrorists are preparing for, and the world is ready to respond. Radiation is a threat to everyone in the world, and the nuclear power plant must be fully protected from any radiation incidents,” Zelensky said in his evening address.
There will be no second Chornobyl
The main mechanism for removing heat from the reactor is the cooling system for the condenser of the external circuit turbine. “The water circulating in it is cooled in two ways,” Gennadiy Ryabtsev, director of the Psyche Scientific and Technical Center, told ICTV in an interview, “either with external water from a cooling pond or in cooling towers.
For reference:
A cooling tower is a structure in the form of a tower where water is cooled by atmospheric air. These towers can be seen on any ZNPP images.
Cooling towers are used mainly when there is not enough water in the cooling pond for some reason. The area of the mirror and the depth of the cooling pond are determined by the power plant capacity, the amount of heat to be discharged, the climatic conditions of the area and the shape of the reservoir. Typically, the pond depth is 4-5 meters. At ZNPP, the pond depth is 17 meters.
– Currently, the water level in the cooling pond is 16.6 meters. ZNPP power units have been out of operation since September 2022. Since then, there has been no active use of water from the cooling pond. If the need arises, the ZNPP pond can be recharged with water from the Zaporizhzhya TPP canal. Its level is more than 11 meters. It is unchanged because it does not depend on the level of the Kakhovka reservoir,” Ryabtsev said.
Experts reassure that a nuclear reactor is not an atomic bomb, so it cannot explode. A bomb is a fast device. In a bomb, the duration of energy release is a thousand times faster than the duration of destruction of its structure. The reactor is a slow device,” Hennadii Riabtsev, director of the Psyche Scientific and Technical Center, told ICTV in an interview.
– “Therefore, under any, even hypothetical scenarios, nothing like an atomic bomb explosion at ZNPP can happen. No missile, bomb, direct hit by an airplane, truck explosion, earthquake of magnitude 6 can cause a reactor explosion,” Ryabtsev said.
On July 6, it was reported that unknown objects appeared on the roof of Unit 4 of the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. They can be seen on Planet Labs satellite images taken on the morning of July 5. The situation around ZNPP remains difficult.
