German experts raise nuclear plant safety worries in Ukraine

• 10 years ago (2014-06-11)
• Junior Isles

Europe 1089 Nuclear 659

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The ongoing crisis in Ukraine exacerbates the risks presented by the country’s 15 Soviet-era nuclear reactors, according to German nuclear safety experts.

Ukraine’s reactors make up an essential half of the country’s energy mix, and yet they were all brought online before 1980 and are of the same soviet generation as Chernobyl’s ill-fated reactors.

"Once you have decided to operate a nuclear power plant or like in this case a nuclear reactor park, you must guarantee you don't have unstable social situations and you definitely can't have a war," said Michael Sailer, chairman of the German Nuclear Waste Management Commission, member of the German Reactor Safety Commission and head of Freiburg-based environmental think tank Öko-Institut.

Ukraine's largest nuclear plant in Zaporizhia is located about 200 km from Donetsk, the focus of the ongoing clashes between pro-Russian militants and the Kiev-based Ukrainian government.

"We are talking about nuclear power plants that have a high risk even when they are constructed well and properly maintained," Sailer says.

"… In Ukraine we are talking about the additional problem that there is an increased potential for human error due to less motivated nuclear operators than elsewhere and the fact that the security features of these reactors are a lot weaker than those of modern reactors," he continues.

Ukraine’s older Soviet-style reactors are already less safe than those in Western Europe under ideal conditions according to Lothar Hahn, former director of the Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit (GRS), Germany's leading nuclear safety research centre.

"If you imagine Ukraine without clear command structures, this clearly means that the stability of the entire power grid is threatened,"Sailer claims. "And a nuclear power plant without several connections to a solid power grid is extremely dangerous."