{"id":14130,"date":"2014-06-12T10:32:10","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T10:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=14130"},"modified":"2014-06-16T10:11:41","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T08:11:41","slug":"ukraine-crisis-raises-risk-for-nuclear-reactors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=14130","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine crisis raises risk for nuclear reactors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"chernobyl09\"<\/a>Ukraine\u2019s volatility exacerbates the risk for the country\u2019s 15 Soviet-style nuclear reactors, warn German experts. They demand more attention for the country where the world\u2019s worst nuclear accident took place.<\/p>\n

The recent news of a water shortage due to a broken pipeline affecting thousands in strife ravaged Eastern Ukraine spells trouble for the safety of the country’s nuclear power plants.<\/p>\n

That’s because the security and reliability of a country’s critical infrastructure like its electrical power and water grid is essential to safely run nuclear reactors.<\/p>\n

“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,” Michael Sailer, chairman of the German Nuclear Waste Management Commission and member of the German Reactor Safety Commission, told DW.<\/p>\n

“We are talking about nuclear power plants that have a high risk even when they are constructed well and properly maintained,” Sailer who also heads Freiburg-based environmental think tank \u00d6ko-Institut added.<\/p>\n

“And in the 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.”<\/p>\n

Ukraine currently has four nuclear power plants with 15 reactors online providing roughly half of the country’s energy needs which makes it practically impossible to shut them down during the crisis. All of the reactors stem from the Soviet era, went on the grid in the 1980s and are similar to the Chernobyl reactor that blew in 1986 causing the worst nuclear accident in history. Ukraine’s largest plant in Zaporizhia is located about 200 kilometers from Donetsk, the epicenter of the clash between pro-Russian militants and the Kyiv government.<\/p>\n

The older Soviet-style reactors are already less safe than those in Western Europe, Lothar Hahn, former director of the Gesellschaft f\u00fcr Anlagen- und Reaktorsicherheit (GRS), Germany’s leading nuclear safety research center, told DW. “But this is even overshadowed by the danger of sabotage or war. Then you would immediately have a dramatic situation on your hands.”<\/p>\n

The experts did not want to describe possible sabotage or war scenarios on the record, but stressed that they consider this a real danger. “You don’t need an army, only 20 to 30 highly trained men,” said Hahn. “These things are totally incalculable.”<\/p>\n

Nuclear experts usually don’t focus on such instable situations and the people who are concerned with instable situations like diplomats usually don’t realize how sensitive a nuclear power plant is.”<\/p>\n

Source: DW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ukraine\u2019s volatility exacerbates the risk for the country\u2019s 15 Soviet-style nuclear reactors, warn German experts. They demand more attention for the country where the world\u2019s worst nuclear accident took place. The recent news of a water shortage due to a broken pipeline affecting thousands in strife ravaged Eastern Ukraine spells trouble for the safety of … Continue reading “Ukraine crisis raises risk for nuclear reactors”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[8556,51,9045,7484],"class_list":["post-14130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-chernobyl","tag-germany","tag-nuclear-power-plants","tag-ukraine"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14131,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14130\/revisions\/14131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}