Russia’s acquisition of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine should make companies and policymakers more careful in their plans to build reactors to fight climate change, nuclear safety experts said Friday.
The Russian military seized the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine on Friday after a massive fire broke out in a training building at the site after heavy fighting. The fire was extinguished and officials said the facility was safe.
But a week after Russian troops captured Ukraine’s dormant but still radioactive Chernobyl plant, the seizure triggered global alarm about wartime attacks about nuclear power vulnerabilities that could unleash deadly radiation. Were.
“You have to take more seriously the need to ensure safety at nuclear plants, not only for natural disasters, but also for man-made ones,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear energy security at the Union for Concerned Scientists.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Friday that the attack on Zaporizhzhya was “incredibly reckless and dangerous. And it threatened the safety of civilians in Russia, Ukraine and Europe.” Gave.”
The US embassy in Ukraine called the Russian attack on the plant a “war crime”. Henry Sokolsky, head of the Center for Non-Proliferation Policy Education, a non-profit group, said the attack shocked the nuclear power industry as a whole:
“The nuclear reactor in Ukraine did not take as big a hit as nuclear power last night, if the authorities factor in the military vulnerability of these machines,” he said.
race to nuclear
Plans to develop nuclear power, which generates electricity while emitting virtually no greenhouse gases, have intensified in recent years as governments pledge to fight global warming.
According to the World Nuclear Association, there are now 58 reactors under construction around the world and 325 are proposed. Many of the proposed plants are in Eastern Europe.
The White House said in November that the US company NuScale Power LLC had signed a plan with Romania to build a small modular reactor (SMR) plant, in which “American technology to lead in the global race for SMR deployment”. was included.
Last month, NuScale, majority-owned by construction and engineering company Flor Corp, signed a deal with Polish company KGHM Polska to build another small modular reactor plant in Poland by 2029 as part of an effort to reduce dependence on coal. which emits large amounts of carbon. Dioxide and soot that damage the lungs when burned.
Nuscale signed an agreement with Kazakhstan Nuclear Power Plant LLP (KNPP) in December to explore the deployment of power plants in that country. NuScale spokeswoman Diane Hughes said the Zaporizhzhia incident “highlights once again the fact that nuclear power plants have strong, resilient and redundant safety features” and that its technology is even more secure.
And in January, Westinghouse Electric Company signed cooperation agreements with 10 Polish companies for the possible construction of six AP1000 conventional nuclear reactors. It also signed a memorandum with Rafaco SA on the possibility of developing nuclear plants in Ukraine, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.
“Nuclear power is a safe, carbon-free source of energy in Ukraine and around the world,” said Westinghouse spokeswoman Kathy Mann. Third Way, a Washington-based think tank that supports nuclear power, said the severity of climate change means the world must ramp up nuclear power rapidly over the next few decades, despite the risks.
“No energy source is completely without risk,” said Josh Freed, the group’s senior vice president of climate and energy. If so, he could have done it. But the fact is… nuclear plants are incredibly safe,” Freed said.
others disagree
UCS’s Lyman rejected “GlibTalk”‘s argument that the new nuclear reactors “would be so safe and that they could be deployed essentially anywhere in the world with minimal security.”
The Atomic Energy Institute, a US industry group, told Reuters it believes nuclear reactors are safe and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine only reinforces the need for Europe to expand its nuclear power capacity. Russia is currently a major supplier of natural gas to power plants in Europe.
“We expect the tragic events of the past weeks to spur interest in working with the United States on the next generation of nuclear power deployment,” said John Kotek, senior vice president for policy development and public affairs at NEI.
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