![]() ![]() Without power, the site’s 1.5-billion-euro decommissioning program could be imperiled, Claire Corkhill, an expert on nuclear material degradation at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, wrote on Twitter and in an email to WIRED. The confinement structure’s ventilation system must run to prevent the exposed nuclear fuel within it from becoming more hazardous. This is the facility built around the concrete “sarcophagus” that surrounds what’s left of the damaged reactor Number Four, which melted down in the 1986 disaster. Water will gradually evaporate or boil away, exposing the fuel rods and releasing radioactive gasses.Ĭhernobyl’s New Safe Confinement structure also needs electricity. “Without electrical power to the cooling pumps, the spent fuel pool will start heating up,” Lyman says. That’s where the biggest risks currently are. Some of Chernobyl’s waste has been transferred into dry casks, but considerable quantities of fuel rods remain in a pool that requires cooling. ![]() “To have a long-term loss of power is certainly a concern,” says Ed Lyman, a senior global security scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and coauthor of the book Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster. Unless officials can restore power, experts fear Chernobyl could once again become the site of a nuclear calamity. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which promotes the peaceful use of nuclear energy and prevents nuclear weapon proliferation, says it lost contact with Chernobyl’s radiation monitoring systems on Tuesday. The 210 technical personnel and guards have not been allowed to rotate out to rest. The situation there is deteriorating the facility lost power on Wednesday, and backup diesel generators have only enough fuel for two days. #RUSSIAN NUCLEAR REACTOR MELTDOWN IN CHERNOBYL OFFLINE#Two weeks ago, Russian forces seized control of the defunct Chernobyl, once the site of the world’s worst nuclear meltdown, and Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s biggest active nuclear power plant, raising concerns of nuclear risks in the middle of a war zone.Īlthough Chernobyl’s last reactor went offline in 2000, the site now serves as a nuclear waste storage facility-and a highly contaminated one. ![]()
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