It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, June 08, 2019
Friday, March 11, 2022
Ukraine: As war rages what are the risks at the Chernobyl nuclear plant?
Threat of a nuclear catastrophe is low. But experts fear for safety of workers who have been unable to rotate off shift. Communications with the site are down and electricity has reportedly been lost.
Russian soldiers have taken over the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
In late February Russian troops invading Ukraine occupied the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant, site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, and took over an exclusion zone that houses decommissioned reactors and radioactive waste facilities.
Since then, the 210 technicians and guards responsible for keeping it safe have not taken a proper break.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations body responsible for nuclear security, says a key pillar of nuclear safety is giving operating staff the capacity to make decisions free of "undue pressure." But overworked staff at Chernobyl are trying to fulfil their duties amid an invasion that has already forced 2 million people to flee.
A combination of factors has increased fears of radioactive leaks from the Chernobyl site. But there is no chance of a nuclear meltdown — the last reactor was closed more than two decades ago. For now, the main concerns are for staff.
"I'm deeply concerned about the difficult and stressful situation facing staff at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the potential risks this entails for nuclear safety," said IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi in a press statement Tuesday. "I call on the forces in effective control of the site to urgently facilitate the safe rotation of personnel there."
The abandoned city of Pripyat near Chernobyl
Communications and power failures
Compounding the concerns are problems with communications and electricity.
On Tuesday, the IAEA said data transmission from monitoring systems installed at Chernobyl had been lost and Ukraine's regulatory authority could only communicate with the plant via email. State-run nuclear energy company Ukrenergo reported Wednesday that a high-voltage electricity line connecting Kyiv and Chernobyl had been disconnected. That has forced workers to rely on diesel generators for electricity and there are concerns it could disrupt the cooling pumps for spent fuel.
Radioactive fuel rods continue to heat up after they have been taken out of reactors and need to be chilled in water for years before they can be moved to dry storage facilities. More than 20,000 spent fuel rods are sitting in wet and dry storage facilities at the site.
A massive steel and concrete structure contains nuclear reactor 4 at the Chernobyl power plant
If the cooling pools were to dry out, the radiation could hurt workers. But experts said a large release of radiation akin to the 1986 disaster is unlikely and would not "have consequences outside the plant site."
"It is also important to note that drying out of the ponds will not cause a nuclear reaction or explosion to occur," said Mark Foreman, associate professor of nuclear chemistry at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, in a statement.
A report from the Ukrainian state regulator in 2011 stress-tested different scenarios that could lead to failure. It found that if electricity were cut, the loss of the pool water cooling function would raise temperatures — but not by enough to cause an accident.
In a tweet on Wednesday, the IAEA confirmed the heat load of the spent fuel storage pool and the volume of cooling water was enough to effectively remove heat without the need for electricity.
"The spent fuel there is so old that evaporation will not likely be the problem," said Jan Haverkamp, a nuclear expert at environmental campaign group Greenpeace. Still, he added, "an explosion hitting the pool could cause overheating."
The loss of electricity could also hit the ventilation system and make it harder to manage radioactive dust.
"It may become much harder for workers to enter some parts of the site without full protective clothing," said Foreman. "They may also have greater difficulty in changing in and out of their protective clothing. Some parts of the site might become off limits to the workers until the power is restored."
Nuclear safety
Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to fully invade Ukraine in February has thrown the security of nuclear power into the spotlight.
"If there is a nuclear accident the cause will not be a tsunami brought on by mother nature," said Grossi on Monday, referring to the earthquake that flooded the reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011. "Instead, it will be the result of human failure to act when we knew we could."
Chernobyl is a powerful symbol of nuclear catastrophe. In 1986, a sudden surge of power during a reactor test destroyed Unit 4 of the poorly designed nuclear power station, in what was then part of the Soviet Union. The fire that followed released clouds of radioactive material into the environment that led to authorities setting up an exclusion zone and evacuating hundreds of thousands of people. Dozens are thought to have died as a direct result of the disaster.
Radiation levels have since fallen. Some residents of the exclusion zone have returned to their homes and live in areas with levels that are above average but not fatal. Radiation unexpectedly spiked in February when Russian troops entered the area, possibly because of heavy vehicles raising a layer of topsoil and kicking dust up into the air.
The IAEA found the levels pose no danger to the public. But the unprecedented reality of war in a country operating nuclear power stations has raised the specter of nuclear catastrophe.
The Russian army shelled Europe's largest nuclear power plant last week before taking over the site. Though there was no safety incident, it was the first time that military explosives have hit an operating nuclear facility.
"We've entered something that that the industry was in complete denial of," said Haverkamp. "Nuclear power is just not an energy source that belongs in a war situation."
Edited by: Jennifer Collins
IAEA: Ukraine has lost communications
with Chernobyl nuclear plant
Ukrenergo, Ukraine's national electricity operator, said that the plant remains disconnected from the national power grid and will stay that way until Russian forces allow safe passage for repair workers.
March 10 (UPI) -- Ukraine has lost all communications with the Chernobyl nuclear power station, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said Thursday, a day after heavy Russian shelling cut all external power to the plant.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the site had been able to communicate with the site by email and before it lost the ability to do so the regulator said the plant's power lines had been damaged in shelling from the day before, disconnecting it from the power grid.
However, there have since been reports that power has been restored at the site but IAEA said it was looking for confirmation.
State-run power company Ukrenergo has not commented on the reports but said earlier Thursday that the plant is running on emergency diesel generators, but the fuel is limited. Chernobyl's cooling, ventilation and fire-extinguishing systems -- all vital in the running of the nuclear power plant safely -- are powered by the damaged line.
RELATED Officials fear possible radiation leak after Chernobyl nuclear plant loses power in Ukraine
The regulator told IAEA that the generators hold a two-day supply of fuel and were powering systems important to safety, including those for spent nuclear fuel as well as water control and chemical water treatment.
Grossi said that in order to maintain power at the site either the lines need to be repaired or supplies of diesel be delivered to refuel the generates.
The IAEA assured that the plant being disconnected from the grid "will not have a critical impact on essential safety functions at the site" with the regulator also informing the watchdog that if the generators die and the power is not restored the safety systems would continue to be in place.
RELATED IAEA loses contact with safeguards monitoring systems at Chernobyl nuclear plant
If all emergency power was lost, the regulator said it would be able to monitor the spent fuel pool but under worsening radiation safety conditions due to a lack of ventilation at the facility.
The volume of cooling water used to remove heat from spent nuclear fuel was "sufficient" despite being without electricity and the systems and structures for the pool were not damaged in the attack, the IAEA said.
Heavy Russian shelling damaged the high-voltage power lines to the plant on Wednesday, and crews have not yet been able to repair it due to sustained Russian assaults in the area.
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Ukrenergo said that the plant remains disconnected from the national power grid and will stay that way until Russian forces allow safe passage for repair workers.
Ukrainian officials said it has declined an offer from Belarus, a chief Russian ally in the war in Ukraine, of helping to restore power to the station.
"Ukrenergo does not need the assistance of the Belarusian side in repairing the high-voltage line, damaged by the Russian shelling, that fed Chernobyl nuclear power plant," the state-run power company said Thursday in a translated message on Facebook.
Soviet workers in protective gear take radiation measurements in the area surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which is in present-day Ukraine, after the explosion on April 26, 1986.
"We need a cease-fire and the admission of our repair teams, who have been waiting for an agreement to leave for repairs since [Wednesday].
"We are ready to immediately repair the lines and restore power to Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which has been without electricity for more than a day. Just stop the shelling and let our teams do their job."
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk has called for a safe corridor to allow utility workers to enter the area and make the repairs.
"We demand that a repair team immediately be allowed access to get rid of the damage," Vereshchuk said, according to The Washington Post. "We ask the global community to focus its attention on this problem."
Russian forces seized control of the Chernobyl plant immediately after launching its invasion on Feb. 24. And the workers at the site have not been able to rotate since, with Grossi having repeatedly warned that this is compromising "a vital safety pillar."
Located about 70 miles northwest of Kyiv, the plant was the site of one of the world's worst nuclear accidents in 1986 when a reactor exploded and sent radiation across Europe.
LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CHERNOBYL
Monday, June 06, 2022
Chernobyl, UKRAINE: A rescue worker sets flag signalling radioactivity in front of Chernobyl nuclear power plant during a drill organized by Ukraine's Emergency Ministry 08 November 2006. Employees and rescue workers improved their reactivity in case of a collapse of the sarcophagus covering the destroyed 4th power block.S
Taiyler Simone Mitchell
Mon, June 6, 2022, 8:26 PM·2 min read
Russian forces seized the Chernobyl nuclear plant on the first day of the Ukrainian invasion.
Hundreds of workers were held hostage during the occupation until the pullout in March.
Workers are now left to clean up the mess Russian troops left behind — including vodka and feces.
Ukrainian workers who are cleaning up the Chernobyl nuclear plant following the Russian troop withdrawal have found "high-quality vodka," The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Hundreds of workers were held hostage at the plant for weeks after Russian forces took over on February 24 — the start of Vladimir Putin's unprovoked war on Ukraine.
"When the invasion started, the front guards got a call to fall back because a huge flow of Russian troops were coming," said Julia Bezdizha, a spokeswoman for the plant, told The Journal. "They fled mainly because it was very dangerous to stay and engage in heavy combat because of the heavy radiation."
The Russian troops began their withdrawal in late March after having been affected by "significant doses of radiation," Ukrainian authorities previously said.
Russian soldiers were reported to have dug up trenches and navigated the plant without protective gear.
Radiation exposure can lead to varying short and long-term health effects — including acute radiation syndrome, cancer, and mental distress — according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We believe very soon [the Russians] will feel the consequences of radiation that they have received. Some of them will feel it in months, some of them in years," Yevhen Kramarenko, head of the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management, said at a press conference in April. "But anyway, all of the servicemen who were there will feel it at some point."
He added that it's unclear how radiation levels have changed nearby after the site — including its radioactive soil — was tampered with.
In addition to leaving behind around 100 liters of high-quality vodka, the Russian troops left a large mess at the plant, per The Journal.
Ukrainian workers found human feces, smashed computer screens, and spray-painted walls throughout the plant, according to The Journal.
"The poop was the icing on the cake," Aleksandr Barsukov, the deputy director of the Chernobyl Ecocenter, told The Journal.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Chernobyl nuclear plant
Taiyler Simone Mitchell
Mon, June 6, 2022
Ukrainian soldiers sit on top of a military vehicle parked outside the hotel in Prypiat, Ukraine on February 4.
Russian forces began their withdrawal from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster site in March.
But Ukrainian workers are now discovering what they left behind — including human feces.
"The poop was the icing on the cake," the deputy director of the Chernobyl Ecocenter, said.
Russian forces may have evacuated the Chernobyl nuclear plant, but they destroyed the premises leaving behind mounds of defecation in each office, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Hundreds of Ukrainian workers were held hostage for weeks throughout the Russian occupation. Now workers are moving to clean up the site following the Russian troops' withdrawal in late March after being affected by "significant doses of radiation."
Aleksandr Barsukov, the deputy director of the Chernobyl Ecocenter, told The Journal that they have found spray-painted conference rooms, smashed computer screens, and 100 liters of high-quality vodka.
"The poop was the icing on the cake," Barsukov said.
Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 Soviet nuclear disaster, was seized on the first day of the war for a total of five weeks.
After disturbing the soil, soldiers "panicked at the first sign" of radiation illness, which "showed up very quickly," Ukrainian state power company Energoatom told The Guardian. The outlet reported that the panic led to the troops pulling out of the region.
"When the invasion started, the front guards got a call to fall back because a huge flow of Russian troops were coming," said Julia Bezdizha, a spokeswoman for the plant, told WSJ. "They fled mainly because it was very dangerous to stay and engage in heavy combat because of the heavy radiation."
Russian forces had also seized Europe's largest nuclear plant, Zaporizhzhia, at the start of the war. The occupation of the plants had some concerned about a nuclear reaction and increased radiation levels.
The exact impact on Russian soldiers is currently unknown, but troops were reported to have dug trenches in radioactive soil and moved about the plant without protective gear.
Radiation exposure can impact an individual's health in many different ways — including acute radiation syndrome, cancer, and mental distress — according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Yevhen Kramarenko, head of the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management, said at a press conference in April that it's unclear how radiation levels in the area have been impacted by the Russian forces.
But, he adds, "we believe very soon [the Russians] will feel the consequences of radiation that they have received. Some of them will feel it in months, some of them in years."
"But anyway, all of the servicemen who were there will feel it at some point," Kramarenko continued.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's unprovoked war against Ukraine began on February 24 and is ongoing.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
By CARA ANNA and INNA VARENYTSIA
1 of 11
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (AP) — Here in the dirt of one of the world’s most radioactive places, Russian soldiers dug trenches. Ukrainian officials worry they were, in effect, digging their own graves.
Thousands of tanks and troops rumbled into the forested Chernobyl exclusion zone in the earliest hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, churning up highly contaminated soil from the site of the 1986 accident that was the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
For more than a month, some Russian soldiers bunked in the earth within sight of the massive structure built to contain radiation from the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor. A close inspection of their trenches was impossible because even walking on the dirt is discouraged.
As the 36th anniversary of the April 26, 1986, disaster approaches and Russia’s invasion continues, it’s clear that Chernobyl — a relic of the Cold War — was never prepared for this.
With scientists and others watching in disbelief from afar, Russian forces flew over the long-closed plant, ignoring the restricted airspace around it. They held personnel still working at the plant at gunpoint during a marathon shift of more than a month, with employees sleeping on tabletops and eating just twice a day.
Even now, weeks after the Russians left, “I need to calm down,” the plant’s main security engineer, Valerii Semenov, told The Associated Press. He worked 35 days straight, sleeping only three hours a night, rationing cigarettes and staying on even after the Russians allowed a shift change.
“I was afraid they would install something and damage the system,” he said in an interview.
Workers kept the Russians from the most dangerous areas, but in what Semenov called the worst situation he has seen in his 30 years at Chernobyl, the plant was without electricity, relying on diesel generators to support the critical work of circulating water for cooling the spent fuel rods.
“It was very dangerous to act in this way,” said Maksym Shevchuck, the deputy head of the state agency managing the exclusion zone. He was scared by it all.
Russia’s invasion marks the first time that occupying a nuclear plant was part of a nation’s war strategy, said Rebecca Harms, former president of the Greens group in the European Parliament, who has visited Chernobyl several times. She called it a “nightmare” scenario in which “every nuclear plant can be used like a pre-installed nuclear bomb.”
A visit to the exclusion zone, more desolate than usual, found that the invasion risked a catastrophe worse than the original explosion and fire at Chernobyl that sent radioactive material into the atmosphere and became a symbol of the Soviet Union’s stumbling final years. Billions of dollars were spent by the international community, including Russia, to stabilize and secure the area.
Now authorities are working with Ukraine’s defense ministry on ways to protect Chernobyl’s most critical places. At the top of the list are anti-drone systems and anti-tank barriers, along with a system to protect against warplanes and helicopters.
None of it will matter much if Russian President Vladimir Putin resorts to nuclear weapons, which Shevchuck says he can’t rule out anymore.
“I understand they can use any kind of weapon and they can do any awful thing,” he said.
Chernobyl needs special international protection with a robust U.N. mandate, Harms said. As with the original disaster, the risks are not only to Ukraine but to nearby Belarus and beyond.
“It depends from where the wind blows,” she said.
After watching thousands of Soviet soldiers work to contain the effects of the 1986 accident, sometimes with no protection, Harms and others were shocked at the Russian soldiers’ disregard for safety, or their ignorance, in the recent invasion.
Some soldiers even stole highly radioactive materials as souvenirs or possibly to sell.
“I think from movies they have the imagination that all dangerous small things are very valuable,” Shevchuck said.
He believes hundreds or thousands of soldiers damaged their health, likely with little idea of the consequences, despite plant workers’ warnings to their commanders.
“Most of the soldiers were around 20 years old,” he said. “All these actions proves that their management, and in Russia in general, human life equals like zero.”
The full extent of Russia’s activities in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is still unknown, especially because the troops scattered mines that the Ukrainian military is still searching for. Some have detonated, further disturbing the radioactive ground. The Russians also set several forest fires, which have been put out.
Ukrainian authorities can’t monitor radiation levels across the zone because Russian soldiers stole the main server for the system, severing the connection on March 2. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday it still wasn’t receiving remote data from its monitoring systems. The Russians even took Chernobyl staffers’ personal radiation monitors.
In the communications center, one of the buildings in the zone not overgrown by nature, the Russians looted and left a carpet of shattered glass. The building felt deeply of the 1980s, with a map on a wall still showing the Soviet Union. Someone at some point had taken a pink marker and traced Ukraine’s border.
In normal times, about 6,000 people work in the zone, about half of them at the nuclear plant. When the Russians invaded, most workers were told to evacuate immediately. Now about 100 are left at the nuclear plant and 100 are elsewhere.
Semenov, the security engineer, recalled the Russians checking the remaining workers for what they called radicals.
“We said, ‘Look at our documents, 90% of us are originally from Russia,’” he said. “But we’re patriots of our country,” meaning Ukraine.
When the Russians hurriedly departed March 31 as part of a withdrawal from the region that left behind scorched tanks and traumatized communities, they took more than 150 Ukrainian national guard members into Belarus. Shevchuck fears they’re now in Russia.
In their rush, the Russians gave nuclear plant managers a choice: Sign a document saying the soldiers had protected the site and there were no complaints, or be taken into Belarus. The managers signed.
One protective measure the Russians did appear to take was leaving open a line routing communications from the nuclear plant through the workers’ town of Slavutych and on to authorities in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. It was used several times, Shevchuck said.
“I think they understood it should be for their safety,” he said. The IAEA said Tuesday the plant is now able to contact Ukraine’s nuclear regulator directly.
Another Ukrainian nuclear plant, at Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, remains under Russian control. It is the largest in Europe.
Shevchuck, like other Ukrainians, has had it with Putin.
“We’re inviting him inside the new safe confinement shelter,” he said. “Then we will close it.”
___
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Friday, January 31, 2020
Engineers develop a 'lava-like' material similar to the highly radioactive molten nuclear fuel created during the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters to investigate ways to clean up the ruined power station sites
- Lava-like Fuel Containing Materials (LFCM) were created in nuclear meltdown
- Contain highly-radioactive nuclear fuel mixed with reactor building materials
- This molten material spread throughout the reactor site and is 'truly unique'
- Little is known about the material and scientists don't know how to remove it
- Creating a structure that behaves similarly will allow for the development of techniques and robots to help neutralise the material
Scientists believe they can help clean up Chernobyl and Fukushima
A substance has been made in a laboratory (pictured) which mimics an extremely dangerous material created during the nuclear reactor disasters of Chernobyl and Fukushima. The material is intentionally similar to the Lava-like Fuel Containing Materials (LFCMs)
The 100-ton mass of the glass-like lava at Chernobyl spread to sub-reactor rooms, solidifying in large masses and creating, among other things, the infamous 'elephants foot' (pictured)
Researchers from the University of Chernobyl created a material designed to replicate the highly-radioactive rocks created in unique conditions to form Lava-like Fuel Containing Materials (LFCMs). Pictured, a Chernobyl rock