Vladimir Asmolov: «The main concern now is for the station's personnel»
The largest in Europe Zaporizhzhya NPP, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces sent an unmanned aerial vehicle with explosives the day before, is today the focus of attention of the IAEA and the entire world community. «Nuclear terror on the continent» is what the Russian Foreign Ministry representative Maria Zakharova called the attack. «A serious challenge to the world community» is what Vladimir Asmolov, a nuclear safety specialist, Doctor of Technical Sciences, and professor, believes. He assessed the consequences of this attack in an interview with an MK observer.
Recall that on August 11, having sent two unmanned aerial vehicles to the Zaporizhzhya NPP at 20.20 and 20.32, the Ukrainian Armed Forces damaged a cooling tower, inside which a large fire broke out — plastic steam traps were burning. By 23.30, a fire brigade of 10 people extinguished the fire, but the cooling tower, according to Rosatom, was seriously damaged.
According to the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Zaporizhia Region, no one was hurt in the fire, and the radiation background around the NPP in the city of Energodar is normal. According to the station's communications director Evgeniya Yashina, whose words are quoted by the Russia-24 TV channel, experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have already visited the site of the fire, examined the consequences and clarified that two cooling towers are located outside the perimeter of the Zaporizhzhya NPP, they are used during the operation of the station (which has been shut down since 2022). The IAEA employees' statement says that damage to the cooling towers does not directly affect the safety of the six stopped units. However, any fire poses a risk of spreading fire to more safety-critical facilities.
The head of the aforementioned agency, Rafael Grossi, also spoke about the incident. He called the attack reckless, increasing the risk of a nuclear accident, but did not place responsibility on either side of the conflict.
According to Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev, it is not enough to simply state the attack and damage – it is necessary to determine the source of this attack and give it an international political assessment.
The reactors of the station belong to the class «VVER» — water-cooled water-moderated nuclear power reactors. They were developed in the USSR. According to Vladimir Asmolov, who was directly involved in their development, they have a high degree of reliability and safety and belong to the third generation of nuclear power plants.
All six power units of the Zaporizhzhya NPP, which were built in the 80s (this is our so-called Project V-320), have an electric capacity of 1000 MW. Their protective reinforced concrete shells are designed to withstand an airplane crash, — says Asmolov. — The shooting in 2022, which took place half a kilometer from these units, could not damage them. Now they hit the cooling tower, caused economic damage, the cooling tower now needs repair.
Of course not. The station is quite resistant to attacks like drones. Much more worrying now is the safety of the personnel, of which there are about 4-5 thousand at the station. This is our main link in ensuring the safety of the station. Imagine, people go to work and understand that at any moment a grenade can fall on their head. They do not have such a strong protective shell as the station!
The station is shut down, but the pumps and ventilation are working, which remove the residual heat. It is insignificant, but requires attention. The external power supply at the station was repeatedly disconnected, which required starting the backup diesel engines, which, by the way, have four safety channels. In general, the survivability of our VVER technology has been tested. But we really don’t want to test its limits further. It’s better to test all this during training.
No big deal. There are thousands of other ways to cool this water. It’s not a problem… But still, the incident is very unpleasant for us.
Of course! Nothing happened to the concrete walls there. The filling burned, which is changed from time to time anyway. These are plastic trays from which water slowly rolls down and cools. By the way, they caught fire only because the cooling tower was out of order, dry inside.
I think that they had no other goal than to scare the staff and the world community. «A second Chernobyl», «transboundary transfer of radioactive substances» … How many panic statements have already been made! But this is all science fiction, without any real evidence.
The statements of Grossi, the Austrian Chancellor, do not contain even a hint of whose side carried out the attack. And in principle, can this be tracked, proven?
This was done by our side a long time ago. As was the case the previous time, when the Zaporizhzhya NPP was shelled, so now, the direction of the strike cannot be hidden. Experts have proven that all attacks on the Zaporizhzhya NPP were carried out by the Ukrainian side. But for some reason, no one in the West wants to pay attention to this.
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