Power cut at Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear plant

Power has been completely cut off at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986, Ukraine’s energy operator Ukrenergo said on Wednesday. The state-run nuclear operator Energoatom warned that radioactive substances could be released because it cannot cool spent nuclear fuel.

Energoatom said there were about 20,000 spent fuel assemblies at Chernobyl that could not be kept cool.

Russian forces took control of the site after they invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Due to ongoing military activity, “there is no possibility to restore the lines,” Ukrenergo said in a statement on its Facebook page. In a later post, Ukrenergo said backup generators were being used for critical systems, but warned that this would only provide power for up to 48 hours.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called for a cease-fire to allow repairs at the plant. After 48 hours, “cooling systems of the storage facility for spent nuclear fuel will stop, making radiation leaks imminent,” Kuleba wrote in a Tweet. “Putin’s barbaric war puts entire Europe in danger. He must stop it immediately!”

On Wednesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tweeted to say it had been informed about the loss of power at Chernobyl, and quoted Director-General Rafael Grossi as saying that the “development violates key safety pillar on ensuring uninterrupted power supply,” adding that “in this case IAEA sees no critical impact on safety.”

The previous day, the IAEA, citing information from Ukrainian officials, expressed concern about the well-being of the staff working at the plant and noted that monitoring systems were not transmitting data.

“I’m deeply concerned about the difficult and stressful situation facing staff at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant and the potential risks this entails for nuclear safety. I call on the forces in effective control of the site to urgently facilitate the safe rotation of personnel there,” Grossi said in a statement, using the Ukrainian spelling for the plant.

The IAEA also said that eight of Ukraine’s 15 reactors were currently operating, including two at the Zaporizhzhya plant, which was seized by Russian forces last week after a firefight that drew worldwide condemnation.

Azby Brown, the leader researcher for monitoring organization Safecast, said last week that the radiation monitoring network near Chernobyl appeared to go offline after Russian forces took control of the plant.

“Shortly after Russian troops were reported … to have entered Chernobyl, spikes were detected by this system but not in a normal pattern. And then an hour or so later they all went offline, and it still is not totally clear what the cause is.”

On Wednesday, Brown said Safecast was working to gather more information on the situation at Chernobyl.

The disaster at the now defunct plant in 1986 left hundreds dead and spread radioactive contamination across Europe. The plant sits inside an exclusion zone that houses decommissioned reactors as well as radioactive waste facilities.

More than 2,000 staff still work at the plant as it requires constant management to prevent another nuclear disaster.

Information from AFP-Jiji and Reuters added