December 30, 2014

Denis Pushilin, a pro-separatist leader in southeast Ukraine, has said the Ukraine faces a ‘second Chornobyl’ due to Ukraine’s decision to use nuclear fuel supplied by Westinghouse for its Soviet-built nuclear power plants.

He said radiation has increased to 14 times the acceptable norm at the Zaporizhia nuclear plant. This is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, and the fifth largest in the world.

The Russian news agency Interfax reported that in a statement on December 28, Pushilin said Ukraine faces “a second Chornobyl” due to Kyiv’s decision to use nuclear fuel supplied by Westinghouse — a reference to the deadly 1986 nuclear power plant accident that spead radioactivity over parts of Europe.

Pushilin said that “currently the level of radiation is 14 times higher than the acceptable norm” in the area around the Zaporizhzhya plant and that the problem started November 28 “after an unsuccessful attempt to replace rods in the Russian-made third block (reactor) with the product of the American company Western house.”

According to authorities, Unit 3 of the Zaporizhia plant suffered a short circuit on Nov. 28, and theis reactor was shut down for a week. Pushilin alleges that the reason for the shutdown was the unsuccessful replacement of Russian-made fuel rods with Westinghouse fuel rods.

Today a story came out on a Russian website, documenting a report by Ukrainian emergency services that radiation had increased to 16.8 times the acceptable norm. This story was picked up at RT.com.

Radiation levels were at 5.05 mSv/yr. The criterion for evacuation in Ukraine from Chernobyl was 5 mSv/yr.

This comes out to 0.58 μSv/hr. Presumably this does not include background radiation. According to the plant operator’s website, background radiation at the plant is 0.10 μSv/hr, which gives a 0.68 μSv/hr dose.

This is equivalent to the less contaminated parts of Fukushima prefecture. It might be around half the amount of Fukushima City. But it seems to be increasing.

But this is from one reactor out of the 6 at the plant. Today, it was announced that Ukraine had reached a deal for Westinghouse to supply nuclear fuel to all Ukrainian nuclear power plants.

Ukraine’s switch to the use of upgraded nuclear fuel from the United States at its nuclear power plants (NPP), built in the Soviet times, could threaten safety both at the domestic level and in Europe as well, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Moscow was somehow alarmed as Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk announced on December 30 the signing of an agreement with US company Westinghouse concerning nuclear fuel supplies for Ukrainian nuclear power plants,” the ministry said in its statement…

“It seems that the Chernobyl tragedy did not teach Kiev authorities any lessons concerning a scientifically feasible approach to the [peaceful] use of nuclear energy,” the Russian ministry said in its statement. “In might be in fact, that the nuclear safety is sacrificed for the sake of political ambitions or, even more, other tangible interests.”…

“Consequences of possible accidents and meltdowns [at nuclear power plants] will be in the full responsibility of the Ukrainian authorities and US suppliers of [nuclear] fuel,” the statement added.

Safety concerns regarding Ukraine’s switch to the US supplied nuclear fuel were repeatedly voiced by Russian experts and some officials, including by Sergey Kiriyenko, the head of Russian state-run nuclear corporation Rosatom.

SNIP