5/28/2023 0 Comments Russian nuclear reactor meltdown![]() IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi has also stressed the importance of his agency inspecting the facilities. Foreign ministry spokesman Ivan Nechayev said last week, “proposals for a demilitarized zone around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are unacceptable” because “their implementation will make the plant more vulnerable.” Russia accuses Ukraine of shelling the facility and demands that it stop. ![]() Russia has repeatedly rejected calls for its withdrawal. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for all military forces to be withdrawn from the plant, a call that the United States, Ukraine and at least 40 other countries have echoed. Finally, the plant’s location on the Dnipro River means that any release of radiation could also spread to the Black Sea.įor these reasons, the international community has called for Russia to allow access to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and to create a demilitarized zone around the facility. ![]() In addition, nuclear fuel and waste containers stored at the site could be damaged, releasing radiation. Ongoing shelling has cut some of the power lines into the reactor. While its containment structures are stronger than those at Chernobyl and built to withstand an airplane crashing into them, the power plant needs electricity to cool the reactors and prevent a meltdown (as at Japan’s Fukushima plant in 2011). Zaporizhzhia, with six separate reactors, is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and the 10th largest in the world. The Russian defense ministry last week produced a map predicting how radioactive fallout could spread to those countries. To that end, the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin has underscored the risks of an accident at Zaporizhzhia to European countries helping to ship NATO weapons to Ukraine. This has made undermining western support for Ukraine even more important to the Kremlin. Events on the battlefield have cast doubt on the Kremlin’s ability to hold planned “referendums” to justify its annexation of occupied territory in Ukraine. At the same time, Russia has had to divert forces to the south-including the Zaporizhzhia region-where Ukraine reportedly is preparing a counteroffensive. Russia’s recent advances in the Donbas region are measured in meters. Ukrainians’ fierce resistance, bolstered by a stream of modern, western weaponry, has turned Russia’s war effort into a slow, bloody slog. The Ukrainian staff reports harassment and abuse by Russian forces, and the facility has been shelled, damaging electrical lines vital to the reactors’ cooling systems. As the war drags on past its sixth month, however, concern for the safety of the facility has grown. Despite the initial fire, no essential equipment was damaged and Ukrainian technicians have continued to operate the complex. After shelling the facility and causing a fire, Russian troops occupied it and stationed personnel and munitions there, in effect using the nuclear reactors as a shield for their offensive operations. ![]() Russia launched its latest invasion of Ukraine on February 24, and on March 4 Russian forces captured the nuclear power plant near Zaporizhzhia. Indeed, Russia’s actions around the Zaporizhzhia plant, and earlier at the Chernobyl nuclear complex, violate Russia’s own formally professed standards, which bar military actions that “may result” in any release of “destructive factors and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.” What Russia is Doing and Why The requirement that it do so is rooted in international humanitarian law, which prohibits attacks against civilian targets and demands “particular care” around nuclear power stations. In particular, Russia must cease all military operations at or near Ukraine’s nuclear facilities and return full control of the Zaporizhzhia plant to Ukraine. Ukrainian rescuers rehearse for nuclear disaster at Zaporizhzhia, where Russian troops have conducted history’s first armed seizure of an operating nuclear power plant, raising unprecedented, global safety risks. This is undermining global security institutions in which all countries have a stake, and Russia must join the international community in treating nuclear power plants as demilitarized zones. Russia effectively is using the plant at Zaporizhzhia as a pre-positioned nuclear weapon to threaten and intimidate not only Ukrainians but millions of Europeans across a dozen countries. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Europe’s largest nuclear power station have triggered the first real-world case of a crisis that security scholars have feared for decades: a threat of radiological disaster from a wartime incursion on an operating nuclear power plant. ![]()
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