NO IMMEDIATE DANGER BUT AN ‘INCREASED RISK’ OF NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE AFTER DAM BLOWS, SAY UKRAINIAN AUTHORITIES

The destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant and resultant flooding has “increased the risk of nuclear catastrophe” by potentially affecting the water supply to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, Ukraine’s energy authority said, but added that there was currently “no direct threat.”

Ukrainian officials have been warning of potentially devastating consequences if the Kakhovka Dam burst since last year, and accusing Russia of planning deliberate sabotage. In October, President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russian forces of mining the facility despite the risk of “catastrophe on a grand scale”.

Russia and Ukraine blamed each other in the aftermath of the breach this morning, which caused widespread flooding in the towns of the Kherson region and could threaten water supply.

The nightmare scenario is that falling water levels threaten the cooling facilities at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), the largest on the continent with the power to serve four million homes, increasing the risk of nuclear fuel overheating and potentially exploding.

But Ukraine’s energy authority Energoatom said that water levels at ZNPP were “sufficient” for the plant’s needs with monitoring ongoing.

That judgement was echoed by nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which said there “no immediate nuclear safety risk at the plant”.

ZNPP has been occupied by Russian forces since the early days of the war, with Ukrainian scientists initially kept at their control, before the plant went into “cold shutdown” in September 2022.

Ukraine was previously the site of the world’s largest ever nuclear disaster with a meltdown at Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986.

2023-06-06T09:32:49Z dg43tfdfdgfd