Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Reported to Have Lost Electricity. Here's What That Means

Chernobyl's nuclear power plant and all of the facilities in the Chernobyl exclusion zone have been disconnected.

Live Science previously reported that on the first day of the invasion, Russian forces attacked the former nuclear facility and took its staff hostage. The 20,000 spent nuclear fuel units held in the cooling tanks will no longer receive active cooling now that the plant has been disconnected from the electrical grid.

Ukrainian officials have warned that this could increase the likelihood of radioactive material being released and give a dangerous dose to the personnel at the plant. The spent fuel rods are 22 years old and much colder than they were, so this event is unlikely, according to some nuclear energy experts.

There are 5 weird things you didn't know about Chernobyl.

The spent fuel rods are at least 22 years old. Mark Nelson, the managing director of the Radiant Energy Fund, which advises companies and nonprofits about nuclear energy, wrote on the social networking site that they have very little heat.

The heat is so low that experts say it will take weeks or even months to heat the water enough to dry out the pool. Natural air circulation should be sufficient.

There has yet to be any independent verification of the cause of the power outage blamed on the damage caused by the occupiers.

The Chernobyl plant has a reserve diesel generator capacity of 48 hours, and Dmytro Kuleba called for a ceasefire to restore electricity.

The staff at Chernobyl have been held hostage for two weeks, and officials from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency expressed increasing concern for their well-being. Workers used to leave the plant after work hours ended, but now have to live at the site.

The UN's nuclear watchdog stopped receiving data from the systems set up to monitor the nuclear material at Chernobyl.

Safeguards are the technical measures that the IAEA uses to keep track of nuclear material. With these offline, the agency has no way of knowing the location of the nuclear material, increasing the chance that it could fall into the wrong hands.

While workers have access to food and water, and medicine to a limited extent, remote data transmission from safeguards monitoring systems installed at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant has been lost.

The staff at the facility are responsible for ensuring the safe disposal of radioactive material inside the plant. Work has been put on hold since the Russian occupation of Chernobyl. Workers could only be contacted via email before the power went out.

The director general of the IAEA said in the statement that he was deeply concerned about the situation facing staff at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

I call on the forces in control of the site to facilitate the safe rotation of personnel.

According to a statement from the Nuclear Regulator of Ukraine, eight of the country's 15 operational nuclear reactors are still online. The Zaporizhzhya plant caught fire after it was captured, but staff are working in shifts.

The levels of radiation at Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhya have been reported to be normal.

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The article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.