Zaporizhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant captured by Russian invaders

The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which suffered a fire in one of its buildings and was later taken over by the Russian Army, is the largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world.

Last night there was a Russian attack against this nuclear power plant and the fire in one of its buildings, which was put out by firefighters this Friday at 06:20 a.m. (04:20 GMT), after a few hours of uncertainty. The plant was finally taken by the invading army.

The director general of the UN nuclear agency, the Argentine Rafael Grossi, criticized today that security has been compromised by a Russian attack, but, for “luck”, there were no radioactive releases.

What is the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant like?

Equipped with six WWER-1000 type reactors and a total power of 6,000 MW, it is the main electricity supplier in Ukraine with a generation of between 40,000 million and 42,000 million kWh of electricity, which represents one fifth of the annual production of the country and half of all output from the four Ukrainian nuclear power plants.

Located in the steppe zone of Ukraine, on the shores of the Kakhovka reservoir, its construction began in 1981 and was carried out in stages. Between 1984 and 1987 four power units were put into operation. The fifth began operating in 1989 and the sixth in 1995 after the lifting of the moratorium on the construction of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, according to information on the plant’s website.

In 2000, the Zaporizhia NPP was recognized as one of the three best nuclear power plants in the world, which fully meets the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

It was the first of the Ukrainian plants to be provided with a dry spent fuel installation on site. It has 80 containers, although its design is made to house 380 with the capacity to store the irradiated fuel elements throughout the useful life of the plant.

The plant is also designed with the “Ring” information and measurement system, with a surveillance system that covers a radius of 30 kilometers.

Four nuclear power plants in Ukraine

According to IAEA data, Ukraine has four nuclear power plants located in Rovno, in the northwest, Khmelnitsky and Zaporizhia, both in the southeast of the country, and another called South Ukraine.

As a whole, they have 15 reactors with a capacity to produce 13,835 megawatts.

The Rovno plant has 4 nuclear reactors, the Zaporizhia plant 6, the South Ukraine plant 3 and the Khmelnytsky plant 2.

Ukraine extracts uranium, but does not have enrichment technologies and receives fuel for its atomic plants from Russia, which accounts for more than half of the electricity produced by the country.

The Ukrainian nuclear program began in the 1950s. In 1962, the Ministry of Energy and Electricity of Ukraine, then belonging to the Soviet Union, was created and three years later the single power system of Ukraine was established.

Chernobyl memory

In 1977, the Chernobyl plant came into operation, the first atomic plant built in Ukraine and which in 1986 caused the greatest nuclear catastrophe in history.

On April 26, 1986, the explosion of reactor number four at the Chernobyl power plant triggered a nuclear accident that released into the atmosphere radioactivity equivalent to between 100 and 500 atomic bombs like the Hiroshima bomb. According to calculations by Ukrainian experts, the accident claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people.

In 1994 Ukraine joined the Convention on Nuclear Safety and a year later the law on the Use of Nuclear Energy and Radiation Safety was approved, and ratified in 1997.

In 1996, the “Energoatom” was created, the state company that manages Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, which supply 50% of the country’s electricity.