With power out at Chernobyl, plant is relying on generators
Atomic energy agency says no need for immediate alarm
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday that there was no need for immediate alarm over a loss of power at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant but left it clear that the situation around the site of the world’s largest nuclear power disaster was deteriorating. Losing electricity means the potential loss of the ability to keep the water that cools radioactive material circulating.
The UN agency said on Twitter that the plant, which has been occupied by Russian troops since the early days of the invasion into Ukraine, had suffered a loss of power that violated a “key safety pillar” for the site of the 1986 leak. But the agency added that it saw “no critical impact on safety” at this time because the amount of water in cooling ponds and around radioactive waste was sufficient, even without continuous power to the plant.
But there are clearly deep worries in the nuclear community about the long-term fate of the decommissioned facility, which is still staffed by several thousand workers who oversee the plant and its fuel and waste storage.
The shelling last week of a different, operating nuclear power facility led to calls from U.S. President Joe Biden to the embattled president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Biden later denounced the military action, at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex in southern Ukraine, as “reckless,” one of a series of nuclear hazards that have been created by the invasion.
But Chernobyl, which is in an “excluded zone” north of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, was right on the invasion path for Russian forces flowing south from Belarus. There have been reports from the Ukrainian government — which has called for a ceasefire around the plant to allow inspectors and other workers to get in — that the 200 or so staff members who were on duty at the time of the invasion are still there and are working under guard. They have not been rotated out in nearly two weeks.
The IAEA’s statement came in response to the Ukrainian nuclear regulator, which painted a more dire picture of what would happen if the power remained off the power grid for longer than 48 hours, the amount of time it said backup generators could operate. It was not clear whether those generators were working, or whether they were out of fuel.
On Tuesday, the IAEA also said it had lost communications with its sensors at the plant. That may be the result of the same loss of electric power.
While that does not pose an immediate threat, it means that there would be no effective way of detecting a rise in radiation levels or determining quickly where it was coming from.