The potential for nuclear disaster at two of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants has been averted, at least for now.
Russia’s energy ministry announced on March 10 that Belarusian experts had restored power to Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The fire at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine, now also under Russian occupation, has been extinguished.
However, Ukrainian officials have not yet confirmed that power has been restored at Chernobyl.
Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, Russian troops seized control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Reuters reported that Chernobyl was rendered inoperable due to fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
The Ukrainian government said the Chernobyl power plant was cut off from the electric grid by Russian forces on March 9. The news ignited global concern, as the lack of electrical power could create a risk of a radiation leak and could potentially jeopardize the cooling of nuclear material stored on the site.
Ukraine’s national electricity grid operator, Ukrenergo, said earlier on March 10 it had a team ready to restore power at the closed Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It also rejected an offer from neighboring Belarus to send specialists to help fix the power supply.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk posted a video on the social media platform Telegram in which she said that crews must be allowed to enter the site and fix the power line that she claimed Russian forces had destroyed.
“We demand that a repair team immediately be allowed access to get rid of the damage,” she said. “We ask the global community to focus its attention on this problem.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that the Russian capture of the plant violates a key safety pillar – ensuring uninterrupted power supply – but also stated it “sees no critical impact on safety.”
Following the power outage at Chernobyl, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi announced that the agency had lost remote data transmission from the safeguard systems that monitor nuclear material at the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plants.
Russian forces captured Zaporizhzhya, Europe’s largest power plant, on March 5 with a late-night attack, after which a fire broke out. Russia’s actions triggered memories of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in 1986, prompting global concerns of another potentially similar event.
Chernobyl was the only accident in the history of commercial nuclear power where radiation-related fatalities occurred. According to the World Nuclear Association, 237 people involved in the clean-up were diagnosed with acute radiation syndrome (ARS) and twenty-eight of them died within a few weeks.
The association asserts the Chernobyl disaster was a result of flawed Soviet reactor design combined with serious operator errors, claiming it “was a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture.”
Ukrainian officials later revealed that the fire at Zaporizhzhya was eventually put out, and no radiation was emitted. However, Russia’s aggressive move was heavily criticized by the international community and authorities worldwide.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby responded to the development by stating that the incident demonstrated the Russians’ recklessness in carrying out this unprovoked invasion, per the Associated Press (AP).
Ukraine’s United Nations ambassador stated that the fire started because Russia bombed the plant during a United Nations Security Council emergency meeting, accusing Moscow of committing “nuclear terrorism.”
In contrast, Igor Konashenkov, the Russian defense ministry’s spokesman, claimed that a Ukrainian sabotage group set fire to Zaporizhzhya, but did not provide any evidence to support the allegation.
