This is the Zaporozhia NPP where there was a nuclear accident last December that was hushed up by the Ukrainian Junta and international media
Ukrainian
nuclear waste stored in open air 200km from warzone
RT,
14
May, 2015
Serious
concerns have been raised by experts and environmentalists over the
‘shocking’ way spent nuclear fuel is being stored at Zaporizhia
nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, just 200km away from the
front line in Donbass.
More
than 3,000 spent nuclear fuel rods are being stored in the open air
in mental casks close to the perimeter fence at the Zaporizhia
nuclear power plant in conditions that have shocked
environmentalists, The Guardian reports.
Nuclear
experts say the waste should have another secondary containment
structure, such as a building with a roof.
“With
a war around the corner, it is shocking that the spent fuel rod
containers are standing under the open sky, with just a metal gate
and some security guards waltzing up and down for protection. It is
unheard of when, in Germany, interim storage operators have been
ordered by the court to terror-proof their casks with roofs and
reinforced walls,” Patricia Lorenz, a Friends of the Earth nuclear
spokeswoman who visited the plant on a fact-finding mission, told the
paper.
Although
the front line is for now too far away from the nuclear plant to be
at any risk, the potential consequences of the conflict engulfing the
power station is major worry to locals.
The
memory of the Chernobyl explosion in the north of Ukraine 30 years
ago, which poisoned vast tracts of land, is still fresh in many
people’s minds.
“Given
the current state of warfare, I cannot say what could be done to
completely protect installations from attack, except to build them on
Mars,” said Sergiy Bozhko , the chairman of the State Nuclear
Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU).
The
current Zaporizhia nuclear fuel storage unit was built to a US design
and did involve testing to withstand a terrorist attack.
However
a dry storage container with a bomb resilient roof and contained
ventilation system would offer much greater protection.
However
this would be impossible to build on the current site and it would
have to be constructed somewhere else nearby and then all the nuclear
casks would have to be moved inside at even greater expense.
“It
is obvious that if you do not have an array of dry cast [interim]
stores with secondary containment around it, then that will have a
greater risk of release of radioactive material,” said Antony
Froggatt, a senior research fellow and European nuclear specialist at
Chatham House, London.
Although
sources at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
(EBRD) told The Guardian that any request for funding for such a
structure would be seriously considered. The bank has already made
300 million euros available to extend the lifespan of Ukraine’s
ageing nuclear plants.
Since
the conflict in Donbass has severely limited the supply of Russian
gas, Ukraine’s reliance on its 15 Soviet-era reactors has increased
by 10 percent; the country now gets 60 percent of its energy from
nuclear power.
Nuclear
energy is one area where Ukraine and Russia still cooperate, and
Ukraine still depends almost entirely on Russia’s Rosatom for
enriched uranium.
But
in the long term Ukraine aims to diversify its nuclear fuel contract
between the US company Westinghouse and European companies as well as
Rosatom.
But
deals with Westinghouse and the French company Areva are still
sketchy and market diversification will be slow.
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