3 ms·
> During this war there has not been legitimate danger of nuclear accidents By all accounts, the Russian forces fired missiles at the Zaporizhzhia power plant,
by retrac 5y ago
> During this war there has not been legitimate danger of nuclear accidents
By all accounts, the Russian forces fired missiles at the Zaporizhzhia power plant, and there was a fire on site. I too was somewhat dismissive of the "omg Chernobyl 2.0" rhetoric. It's a PWR, much newer design, quite like most Western PWR designs, with containment, and a lot more passive safety features than something like the RBMKs at Chernobyl. The likely outcome of a missile hitting the containment building itself is a wasted missile, and something hitting the cooling or support facilities would lead most likely to a power cut, not a meltdown, and even if there was a meltdown, it would likely be largely contained.
Still. I do think it's fair to say that firing missiles and causing explosions and/or fires at an operating nuclear power plant has some degree of very real risk of causing a nuclear accident.
- gregwebs 5y agoThey didn't actually fire missiles at the power plant. Instead a building on the premises that is not near the reactors was hit. If this was due to the Russians firing carelessly at the Ukranians then I agree there is some danger the projectile could have landed somewhere else and created actual risk of a nuclear accident.
- gregwebs 5y agoThere is better information on this now: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/11/1085427380/ukraine-nuclear-power-plant-zaporizhzhia https://www.npr.org/2022/03/11/1085427380/ukraine-nuclear-po... It does seem there was very careless firing by the Russians that was targeted at Ukranians. They don't seem to have been targeting the plant in any way, but their firing could have easily damaged the plant further if the Ukranians had taken position deeper inside it. It doesn't seem there was any danger of breaching the nuclear reactor itself, but there was danger of destroying the subsystems required for safe operation of the reactor. Obviously Russia is the one starting a war and being careless here, but it also does seem Ukraine should not station troops inside a nuclear facility but instead maintain their troops a good distance away from it.