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Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station Russian attack-fire early morning 4 March 2022

After Russia’s invasion and seizure of Chernobyl and of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, anyone still promoting nuclear power either isn’t paying attention or needs to be placed in a mental institution. Neither Ukraine nor the world can afford another nuclear disaster. Someone needs to take out the Putin regime before it’s too late. If not, the entire world may be destroyed. Even after nuclear power stations are shutdown they need to be permanently managed.

Russia’s sending its most poor, backwards, ignorant and uneducated people from pitiful rural hovels to fight in Ukraine. They can’t even understand the dangers of a nuclear power station. Many Russian soldiers were exposed to high levels of ionizing radiation/nuclear materials at Chernobyl, due to their own ignorance. If the Russian soldiers make a nuclear disaster, then they themselves will die painful deaths:
“Russian Army Turns Ukraine’s Largest Nuclear Plant Into a Military Base By Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson July 5, 2022 11:41 am ET, Wall Street Journal
Land mines and missile launchers are deployed at Zaporizhzhia, as cameras and instruments go dark and workers are held for ransom
The Russian army is transforming Europe’s largest nuclear power plant into a military base overlooking an active front, intensifying a monthslong safety crisis for the vast facility and its thousands of staff…. something… never seen before…
the Russian army is day-by-day positioning the weaponry around a nuclear plant that is among the world’s largest, using it to cement control of the front line where their advance through southern Ukraine ground to a halt…. “It seems like this is one of the Russian tactics, to take critical infrastructure and use it as a shield,” said former Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk…
some Russian soldiers stationed at Zaporizhzhia have turned to a strategy of routine extortion: kidnapping some of the 11,000 plant workers for ransom. More than 40 people are currently being held captive, say plant workers…
The takeover of an active nuclear power plant is unprecedented…”
Read the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20220706032657/https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-army-turns-ukraines-largest-nuclear-plant-into-a-military-base-11657035694

“Nuclear divers are professional, commercial divers who assist nuclear power plants throughout the year with inspections, preventative maintenance and emergent issues.” https://web.archive.org/web/20220612072507/https://nuclear.duke-energy.com/2015/11/18/career-profile-nuclear-divers/ https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/protects-you/hppos/hppos002.html

“On June 29, the occupiers brutally beat Andrii Honcharuk, a diver of the hydraulic plant of the ZNPP, who was taken to the Energodar hospital with multiple injuries yesterday. This is reported on the Telegram channel of Energoatom.
❗️We would like to remind you that, according to Komapinia, the occupiers are preparing a serious provocation at the temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP. In particular, they plan to accuse Ukrainian nuclear workers of storing weapons on the territory of the station. For this purpose, several workers were detained and, by torture, they are being asked to confess, or rather, to confess themselves, that they allegedly threw some kind of weapon into the concrete bowls of the cooling pools at the ZNPP in March: either explosives or projectiles.
Under this pretext, the occupiers insist on draining the cooling pools and checking its basins, as well as stopping the pumps that supply water to the safety systems of the power units. This could leave units of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant without cooling and is a serious breach and could threaten nuclear safety. Then the occupiers can throw anything they want into the concrete bowls: explosives, unexploded shells, other weapons. And then to accuse the ZNPP employees or its defenders of this and make it a formal pretext for inviting to the IAEA station and presenting these “facts” Read original here: https://t.me/s/orlovdmytroEn

“Energodar under the occupation of non-humans suffers terrible and irreversible losses. Today, July 3, diver Andrii Honcharuk of the Zaporizhzhya NPP hydraulic workshop passed away. We will remind that a few days ago, a worker of a nuclear power plant, an experienced and professional diver was extremely brutally beaten by the occupiers. The man was asked to dive into the splash pool of the ZNPP, and after his refusal, monsters in human form tortured Andrii Honcharuk. He was taken to the Energodar hospital with numerous injuries and in a coma. But the injuries turned out to be incompatible with life, and today he died without regaining consciousness. We express our deepest condolences to the relatives and friends of the deceased. We will never forget or forgive the crimes committed by the occupiers and their accomplices-collaborators in Energodar, on our Ukrainian land!”
Read original here: t.me/orlovdmytroEn
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“SUPPLY OF SPARE PARTS TO ZAPORIZHZHIA PLANT ‘MAY BE EXHAUSTED’: UKRAINE REGULATOR
Published 05 July 2022 09:05
Interview of the Acting Chairman of the State Atomic Energy Regulatory Authority – Chief State Inspector for Nuclear Safety of Ukraine Oleg Korikov to the publication “S&P Global”

The supply of spare parts to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine may soon “be exhausted if we do not refill them,” the acting chief nuclear inspector for the Ukrainian nuclear regulator said in an interview in Brussels June 21.

Oleh Korikov, of the State Nuclear Inspectorate of Ukraine, noted that “all plants have spare parts” and that while the 6-GW Zaporizhzhia plant currently had all of the spare parts that it required, there was also at present no way to replenish such parts as the facility is currently controlled by Russia. The parts in question include valves, for example, and consumables that are used during plant operations, he said.

Russia launched its military invasion of Ukraine Feb. 24. Russian forces took control of the Zaporizhzhia plant and the neighboring city of Enerhodar March 4, although personnel from the Ukrainian state nuclear power company Energoatom continue to operate the plant.

Korikov also said that the SNIU would like to postpone any inspection visit by representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna to the Zaporizhzhia plant until after the plant had been taken back from Russian control, as SNIU “could not guarantee the safety” of IAEA inspectors during such a visit. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi has said repeatedly, including again June 29, that a visit by the IAEA to the site is critical to ensuring nuclear safety, security and safeguards are maintained there given the unusual situation.

“The presence of the Russian occupiers at Zaporizhzhia is already a threat to the plant. The Russian occupiers are terrorizing the personnel working at the Zaporizhzhia plant and the residents of Enerhodar,” a city near the plant where many of its employees live, according to Korikov.

“It was similar with Chernobyl during its occupation, but that is now under full Ukrainian control, Korikov added.

The “situation at Zaporizhzhia remains complicated, ammunition is located directly at the plant, this is entirely unacceptable from a safety perspective, there are more than 50 Russian military vehicles on site at the plant, a lot of explosives are lying around the site of the plant, it is very dangerous,” he said.

Korikov confirmed that all nuclear plants in Ukraine that were under Ukrainian government control were now operating in regular mode, but “there is no certainty that this will happen in the future.”

A “huge amount of infrastructure and manufacturing and production capacity in the country has already been destroyed” by the Russian attack, posing a “serious risk” to the continued supply of spare parts and replacement items to the country’s nuclear units, Korikov added.
Korikov also said that Ukrainian nuclear plants were also “under threat of missile attack, there are Russian cruise missiles flying over nuclear plants, including Zaporizhzhia, this creates clear risks of a nuclear accident.

“Nuclear plants are simply not designed to operate under hostile conditions and do not have protection from military actions. Such facilities are vulnerable, the world community simply could not imagine such attacks.” Korikov said.

There is also a “real threat of damage to power supply given the ongoing hostilities in Ukraine,” according to Korikov.

“Stable power supply is at risk, the cooling of fuel is a risk [if power supply is interrupted to any nuclear unit], this is of great concern. If immediate restoration of power is not possible and there is nonadmission of rescue and repair services, this can result in radioactive output from fuel assemblies and an accident,” he said.

Korikov said that the world “needed new standards to prevent a similar situation” from occurring again. The world “could strengthen the international regime, to prevent war against any state who has nuclear power plants, but that would need world consensus,” Korikov added.

Refusal to take Russian nuclear fuel 

Korikov said that Energoatom had decided to refuse to accept delivery of any more nuclear fuel from Russia and that the country was working on the basis of a “transition to a friendly [fuel] supplier.”

Westinghouse nuclear fuel has “been in use in Ukraine since 2015 and there have been no abnormal operations,” Korikov said.

Currently, four VVER-1000 units at the Zaporizhzhia plant and two at the South Ukraine plant already operate on Westinghouse fuel and Energoatom was starting to load Westinghouse fuel into its Rivne-3 reactor, according to Korikov.

Asked how much VVER reactor fuel Ukraine currently had in storage to allow its plants to continue to operate, Korikov said that Westinghouse had told Ukraine that it could supply all of the country’s nuclear units within two years and that Ukraine had enough existing VVER fuel in storage to allow its plants to continue to operate until then.

He also said that he was confident that Westinghouse would be able to supply all of Ukraine’s plants within that timeframe.

Korikov said that Energoatom was also in the process of implementing a switch to Westinghouse nuclear fuel at the two VVER440s at the Rivne plant. Rosatom’s TVEL has been the only qualified supplier of VVER-440 fuel in recent years.

The “first cycle of nuclear fuel from Westinghouse at Rivne will be completed by the end of next year, by the end of 2023,” Korikov said.

IAEA assistance 

Korikov noted that Ukraine had in April 2022 applied for assistance through an International Atomic Energy Agency program for the safety and physical protection of nuclear installations and equipment.

Countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Romania, the UK and the US had all agreed to provide assistance, but so far under this program, Ukraine had only received portable spectrometers from the US, on May 16, according to Korikov.

“That is the only input through this system to date, a huge amount of” spare parts and other material “is expected to support the [Ukrainian nuclear] fleet,” Korikov said.” CC-BY: https://snriu.gov.ua/en/news/supply-spare-parts-zaporizhzhia-plant-may-be-exhausted-ukraine-regulator https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.uk

According to Ukraine’s Energoatom: https://t.me/energoatom_ua/7808
“All Ukrainian nuclear power plants operate stably
✔️ As of 09:00 on July 4, 2022, all operating nuclear power plants of Ukraine are stably producing electricity for the country’s needs.
✔️ The radiation, fire protection, and environmental conditions at the industrial sites of the NPP and the territories adjacent to them have not changed and are within the limits of current norms.
✔️ In the conditions of martial law due to the full-scale aggression of the Russian Federation, NAEC “Energoatom” prioritizes the safety of nuclear installations. Therefore, the main equipment of reactor units of power units, station premises and buildings, perimeters of protected zones and adjacent territories, as well as especially important NPP facilities outside their protected zones are all under increased supervision and control.
✔️ Zaporizhzhia NPP and the city of Energodar are still under occupation, but all power units of the plant are serviced by Ukrainian personnel and continue to work for Ukraine. But as long as the Russian occupation continues, nuclear and radiation safety is under threat.
✔️ The rotation of employees is taking place, but the occupiers not only continue to approve all technical decisions of the personnel, but also increased pressure, checks, open repression and demonstrative “trials” against employees with an undisguised pro-Ukrainian position.
✔️ All nuclear workers continue to work diligently and contribute to the future Victory
https://t.me/energoatom_ua/7808

Russian occupiers torture diver to death at Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant; Ukraine warns of nuclear provocation

Citizens of Energodar Ukraine were able to temporarily block Russian military takeover of the nuclear power station, at the beginning of the war