Ukraine war: Chernobyl power supply cut off, says energy operator
Published
4 days ago
(snip)
The power is needed to keep 20,000 spent fuel rods cool by circulating water through tanks in the nuclear fuel storage facility near reactors 1 and 3.
There are back-up generators able to do this for a few days. If the main power is not brought back online then there is no risk of an explosion, but the water will begin to gradually evaporate and the vapour may well be radioactive, since it can contain material leached from inside the fuel rods.
But any such vapour should be kept within the building, according to Professor Claire Corkhill of the University of Sheffield, who is familiar with the plant.
"I don't think this would lead to a release of radioactivity because it would take a very long time for the water to eventually evaporate. The spent fuel is kept in a modern building which should be sealed and have structural integrity," she said.
(snip)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60678598
There was some discussion in this thread -
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142884873 where I noted about how they are (or at least were) in the process of opening a new spent fuel storage facility within the exclusion zone grounds around Chernobyl to store the spent rods from all of their nuclear plants in that central location -
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=2885028
They had started testing rod transfers this past fall -
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Transfer-of-used-fuel-to-Ukrainian-facility-set-to
They were ready to go "live" in April before the bottom fell out -
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Ukrainian-used-fuel-storage-in-commissioning
The point of that was to save something like $200 million a year from not having to transport, store, and have their spent fuel reprocessed in Russia, by doing that themselves "in country" instead.
= new reply since forum marked as read