No excesses of radioactive emissions and discharges were recorded due to the fire at Zaporizhzhya NPP. Deputy Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk said this during a briefing, reports Komersant ukrainskyi
.
“At about 20 o’clock, the occupiers started a fire at the technical water supply facility on the territory of the nuclear power plant. As a result, the cooling tower and other process equipment may be damaged. However, the means we have, i.e. monitoring systems, have not yet recorded any emissions or discharges of radioactive substances,”
– hrynchuk said.
The IAEA also confirmed that the radiation level at the station remains unchanged. They added that the Agency’s mission, which is on site, is asking the Russian occupiers to immediately provide access to the facility where the fire occurred to assess the situation. It is not yet known what the occupiers’ reaction was.
On the evening of 11 August, President Zelenskyy reported a fire at the Zaporizhzhia NPP. According to the head of the Nikopol district military administration, Yevhen Yevtushenko, the Russian military burned a large number of car tyres in the cooling tower of the station. The fire has now stopped.
ZNPP
Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and the third largest in the world by total capacity. Located in the Zaporizhzhia region near the city of Enerhodar, it consists of six nuclear power units of 1 GW each. Construction began in 1981, and the first unit was commissioned in 1984. The last unit, the sixth, was commissioned in 1995.
ZNPP annually produced about 40 billion kWh of electricity, which was about 20% of Ukraine’s total power generation. It is also the first nuclear power plant in the country to have a dry spent fuel storage facility.
The Russian army seized ZNPP on the night of 4 March 2022, having previously shelled the nuclear facility. Russia has also occupied the city of Enerhodar, near which the plant is located.
Since the beginning of the Russian occupation, Zaporizhzhia NPP has experienced eight full blackouts and one partial blackout, with emergency diesel generators and safety systems being launched. According to Energoatom, their failure threatens to cause an emergency.
The last time the plant faced the threat of blackout was on 22 March this year after Russia’s massive shelling of Ukrainian energy facilities.
Read our article to find out whether the fire at ZNPP is related to the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Kursk offensive:
READMORE FROM TheUkrainian Armed Forces are advancing in Kursk region, and a fire breaks out at Zaporizhzhia NPP: are these events related and what to expect next?