Name: War Threatens Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plants
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Russia's invasion of Ukraine brings "unprecedented" threats to nuclear power plant safety, a nuclear researcher told NOVA.

Ukraine's 15 active nuclear reactors generate about half of the country's electricity.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine brings "unprecedented" threats to nuclear power plant safety, a nuclear researcher told NOVA.

War Threatens Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plants

Ukraine's 15 active nuclear reactors generate about half of the country's electricity.

Tech & Engineering

War Threatens Ukrainian Nuclear Power PlantsPublished: April 5, 2022Narrator: Ukraine is home to both the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and the site of largest nuclear power plant disaster in history.There are 15 active nuclear reactors at four sites across Ukraine, and these plants generate about half of the country’s energy and now Ukraine is in a full-blown war.Kate Brown: We're learning firsthand that civilian nuclear power and war, conventional war do not go together.Narrator: The largest power plant in Europe caught fire as a result of shelling by Russian troops and now that plant, and Chernobyl are both under Russian control.As Russian forces take control of nuclear power plants in Ukraine, concern is growing for the staff that keeps those facilities operating safely.Mariana Budjeryn: They're just humans, and every technological system relies on human on a human operator. The duress and the psychological pressure that these people are operating under, you know, carrying out really, really very highly responsible, very, very crucial tasks of keeping the operation of these power plants safe, all the while worrying how their families are doing back in town.Narrator: Another concern is nuclear power plants in Ukraine losing power, and in turn, losing the ability to keep the core—and the pools where spent, radioactive fuel is stored—cool and stable.Edwin Lyman: People might think, it's paradoxical, but nuclear power plants generally rely on electrical power from the grid to power their safety systems under normal circumstances.Kate Brown: What keeps me up at night is that, now that this is a war zone, should electricity be cut off? That could be a problem.Narrator: Nuclear power plants generate electricity through nuclear fission, when unstable uranium atoms, are broken up into smaller atoms, releasing heat.Nuclear fission takes place in the core of the reactor long rods of nuclear fuel containing uranium are submerged in water.Edwin Lyman: That water will heat up because of the contact with the hot fuel and that is used to generate steam, which then is used to have turbine and produce electricity.Mariana Budjeryn: Whole idea about the safe operation of a nuclear reactor is that you want to control the intensity of that reaction. You really don't want it to go amok, right? Because then really bad things could happen. Narrator: To keep the nuclear fuel from getting too hot water is constantly pumped through the core of the reactor and through pools where spent fuel is stored.But at Chernobyl, the spent fuel has been cooling for years and is not likely to be hot enough to pose an immediate threat if the plant loses power, but the active plants pose bigger risks.Kate Brown: If electricity is cut off going to those plants, we'll have something that we saw in Fukushima when the tsunami cut off electricity. That's what caused the meltdown of those three reactors in Fukushima was loss of electricity that pumps water, and it keeps these plants going.Narrator: In 2011 a tsunami cut off electricity to a nuclear power plant in Japan, causing all three of its cores to melt down. The loss of power resulted in a number of explosions sending radioactive material into the atmosphere and Pacific Ocean, forcing thousands of people to evacuate.Edwin Lyman: If the core does melt, then it generates radioactive gases as well as hydrogen, which not to mention increased steam pressure from boiling water, all of which put pressure on the reactor vessel in the containment and could lead to radioactive releases into the environment.Narrator: Nuclear reactors are usually enclosed in a steel or concrete structure meant to contain radioactivity in the event of a disaster.Edwin Lyman: The cores are designed to withstand certain types of external events. For instance, hurricane force winds and that kind of thing. Those aren't designed necessarily withstand a military grade explosives.Narrator: But the bigger threat may be to the support systems needed for the electrical and cooling systems—like the backup generators these plants rely on in case of a power outage.Mariana Budjeryn: So should there be a power outage or the reactor should be disconnected from the main grid, there are diesel generators that that are supposed to kick in. These 15 nuclear reactors four nuclear power plants finding themselves in the middle of a large scale armed conflict a full blown war?None of the safety and security procedures have been designed with that kind of set of threats in mind.Narrator: It’s not clear how long backup generators can sustain a nuclear power plant with onsite fuelMariana Budjeryn: But if it is something sustained, then eventually you run out of diesel. And and again, at that point, then the deliveries of backup diesel could be encumbered because roads are choked up with with foreign troops. I mean, a myriad of things would could possibly go wrong.Narrator: Still, it’s not likely that a nuclear event today would be to the same scale of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The Chernobyl nuclear plant design was unlike many of the nuclear power plants today, and the reactors did not have a containment structure.Edwin Lyman: Chernobyl was more severe, but for that kind of release, to occur in Ukraine today is less likely. But you could have something more like Fukushima, where you had more limited but significant local contamination out too many miles—23 miles away from the site, pretty heavy contamination.Narrator: Chernobyl’s last reactor was shut down in 2000 but the site still contains highly radioactive material that crews monitor.The 19-mile radius around Chernobyl is saturated with radiation and experts are concerned that increased activity or a fire could spur another radiological event.Kate Brown: A fire would be, you know, not inconceivable a fire could cause some real damage for the soldiers who are there in the immediate area fighting, but also potentially harmful doses for people who are downwind.Narrator: There was a spike in radiation levels at Chernobyl following Russian seizure.Kate Brown: Reports are that this is dust brought from the tanks. You know, the the tanks lift up a lot of dust, and this radioactive materials that are stored in the ground become available for the monitors to pick up. But I'm not sure that seems like 30 times higher seems like an awful lot of dust. So we don't know what happened.Kate Brown: We talk about radio and nuclear cleanup, but that's a euphemism. All you can do is try to put the radioactivity someplace where it doesn't circulate so it can decay.Narrator: The unstable forms of the elements that release radiation, known as radioactive isotopes, become more stable and release less radiation over time, but it can take a staggering amount of time for nuclear waste to decay.Mariana Budjeryn: When you're thinking about mitigating the consequences of a nuclear accident and dealing with kind of the slew of radioactive isotopes and things contaminated with them—whether it's water or soil—you're talking at a time scale, oftentimes, that defies our human kind of lifetimes, right?The time that they remain still active and hazardous depending on the isotopes could be up to tens of thousands of years.

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War Threatens Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plants

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