MOSCOW, August 9. /TASS/. The main risks for the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant are disturbances in the reactor cooling mode, which are fraught with serious consequences, Academician Leonid Bolshov, the founder and scientific director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Nuclear Safety Institute (IBRAE), told TASS on Tuesday.
"There are two options. Option one: electricity supplies to the station are cut, with all transmission lines broken, the diesel generator failed, and pumps no longer pumping primary coolant water. Another big problem: a pipe leading to the spray cooling pond of the secondary cycle is broken," he said.
In any case, in his words, the chain reaction in the reactor stops automatically in case of danger. But since the irradiated fuel always has fission fragments, the reactor core has residual heat, which is to be removed.
"If it is not done, we will have a Thee Mile Island accident (a cooling malfunction accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the United States in 1979) in the best-case scenario or another 2011 Fukushima in the worst-case scenario," Bolshov said.
According to the expert, following the Fukushima accident, all nuclear plants in Russia were equipped with additional diesel generators and movable pumps to be launched in case of electricity outages or a pressure loss in the reactor’s cooling loop.