“Roars and groans the vast Dnieper […]. It bends the tall willows to the ground/Raises mountain-like waves.” Praised in the poems of Taras Shevchenko, the majestic river is nothing but a vast expanse of mud on the outskirts of the city of Zaporizhya.” We knew that the Russians could upset our geography by erasing entire cities, like Mariupol or Bakhmout, but we did not think that they would be able to destroy a river”, sighs Oleh Doudar, who has lived all his life on the banks of the Dnieper, in Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is located.This engineer started working there in 1986, the year of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.Thirty-seven years later, he fears that the nightmare will start again.
Never has a country so nuclearized been the scene of a high intensity conflict. If the four Ukrainian power plants have not experienced an accident, that of Zaporijjia, the largest in Europe, which produced 20% of Ukrainian electricity before the invasion, has been occupied by the Russians since March 2022. Oleh, the head of the operational division, had under his command nearly 700 operators responsible for operating one of the reactors and its turbine. On the night of March 3 to 4, awakened by explosions after a day’s work, he watched the installation take hold from his balcony. Grenade launchers, tank and small arms fire. This expert, who fled the plant in August 2022, is now a refugee in Germany.
Since then, the safety of the Zaporijjia plant, where 2,500 Ukrainian employees – out of 11,500 in normal times – work under the yoke of around 500 armed Russian soldiers, has been hanging by a thread. The destruction of the Kakhovka dam on June 6 is the latest incident to threaten the installation located on the left bank of the river, about 150 kilometers upstream from the structure. The water pumped from the Dnieper, which fell several meters, ensured the cooling of the installation. If the water source disappears, then the system risks overheating. “It’s the same type of plant as Gravelines in France, they have to be constantly cooled even when they are stopped, because there is fuel that continues to heat up inside. This can lead to a meltdown of the core of the reactor”, explains Bernard Laponche, nuclear physicist and president of the Global Chance association. Nuclear power plants, which need water and electricity permanently, “were not designed to operate in a war zone”, sums up the expert. Fortunately, the Zaporijjia power plant is not only dependent on the Dnieper: it can notably draw water from another basin located near the site to cool the reactors and the spent fuel.
“We always thought that the Dnieper was eternal”
The situation would have been critical if the site was running at full speed. For more than eight months, its six reactors have been shut down, well below their operating temperature, but they still need to be cooled. Five are in “cold shutdown”. The heat produced by the decay of the radioactive fuel is not sufficient to boil the cooling pond, which greatly reduces the need for water. The sixth reactor is in “hot shutdown” to meet the plant’s operating needs; therefore more water is needed. It seems that the Russians are in the process to prepare for the “cold shutdown” of this reactor, according to Petro Kotin, president of Energoatom, the Ukrainian national company for the production of nuclear energy.
This decision would follow on from Rafael Grossi’s on-site visit on June 15. Since September, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been trying to obtain the establishment of a demilitarized “safety zone” around the plant, but neither party seems ready to accept such a device. After inspecting the premises, the head of the United Nations nuclear monitoring body deemed the situation “serious” but “in the process of stabilization”, without giving more details. The alternative water reserves are sufficient “for several months”.
Water is not a “critical” problem at the moment, added Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halouchchenko. Now the most important questions are: how to restart the plant after the vacancy, and how to ensure its cooling? ” According to the Ukrainian nuclear regulator, a reactor operating at full power consumes 10 to 15 million cubic meters of water per year.
“We always thought that the Dnieper was eternal, and now we have to find another solution,” laments Oleh Doudar. According to him, even if the site is liberated by the Ukrainian army without too much damage, the dam will have to be restored so that the water rises “at least 14 meters, ideally 16 meters”. The thermal power plant adjoining the nuclear site must also be restarted. The engineer hopes that at least one reactor can be put back into operation. “Every day, we avoided a small disaster,” recalls Oleh. For example, the plant depends on four main lines of 750 kilovolts and a few less powerful intermediate lines, in all about ten. On seven occasions, from September 2022 to May 2023, the teams had to turn on the emergency diesel fuel supply systems, allowing them to last ten to twelve days, because all the lines were out of service. From now on, the plant operates on a single line connected to the Ukrainian network.
Ukraine: the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant
© / afp.com/Nalini LEPETIT-CHELLA, Sophie RAMIS, Paz PIZARRO
A nuclear catastrophe narrowly avoided
The experts and former employees of the plant interviewed are mainly concerned about the security of the installations: the site has been mined by Russian troops, a firing position has been installed. “They forced us to open the engine rooms to put heavy equipment in them from the first month: armored personnel carriers, trucks… We didn’t know exactly what explosives or ammunition were in them, but what is sure is that it is dangerous to have such equipment in a nuclear power plant”, recalls Oleh. On April 12, employees, quoted by Energoatom, even reported the accidental explosion of a mine in the engine room of the fourth reactor!
Equally worrying, nearly 174 dry storage containers of used nuclear fuel are stored in concrete blocks outside the plant. In August 2022, a shell fell a few dozen meters from these stocks, Energoatom reported. “This time, a nuclear disaster was miraculously averted, but miracles cannot last forever,” the Ukrainian company commented. “These containers are strong, but I’m not sure they would survive a direct hit. The destruction of just one could cause a radiological accident, like some sort of dirty bomb,” says Oleh Doudar.
“It would not have the same effect as a Fukushima-type accident, but the radioactive contamination of an area within a radius of 30 kilometers would be enough for the Ukrainian forces to stop the counteroffensive to manage the damage,” adds Olga Kosharna, a scientist who heads the association of experts and professionals Ukrainian Nuclear Forum. However, the Russians are actively preparing for the Ukrainian counter-offensive at Enerhodar. “After having mined the surroundings of the power plant and the banks at the start of the invasion, they have been busy for one or two months mining and creating fortifications outside the city”, reports the mayor, Dmytro Orlov.
Pressure, threats and torture
The working conditions and the psychological pressure exerted on the employees constitute another risk of accident, linked to errors. “Morally, it’s very hard, you arrive at work and you see the armed occupants under your eyes watching you,” says Oleksiy, an engineer who left in July 2022 after threats. Sometimes his colleagues would disappear for hours for “discussions” with the occupiers. A euphemism to speak of muscular interrogations, sometimes with simulations of execution and acts of torture. Some came back with bruises and broken ribs.
Pressure is increasingly aimed at getting employees to sign contracts with the Russian company Rosatom. On October 5, 2022, Putin signed a unilateral decree bringing the plant under Russian control, along with the illegal annexation of the Zaporizhia region. “Three types of employees remain: heroic pro-Ukrainians who stay to keep the facility going and employees who have signed contracts with Rosatom, either for ideological reasons or to earn a second salary in roubles. And then there is to those who signed after being busted by torture and blackmail,” says Oleksiy.
In the Oleh Doudar reactor, of the 700 people under his leadership, 340 remained. Around 70 have signed a contract with Rosatom. Training new specialists could take years. Only 15% of Enerhodar’s 54,000 residents remained in the occupied city. In Zaporijjia, where at least 1,500 Enerhodar families have taken refuge, the water is beginning to recede. But, in front of the aid center of the municipality in exile, where dozens of people are queuing for humanitarian aid, the concern remains. “Like Ukraine,” breathes Marina, a 41-year-old resident, “the plant will only have a future when it is free.”