Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

In News 

• A team of officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived in Ukraine to assess the condition of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant .

About Zaporizhzhia 

• City : Zaporizhzhia is an important town in the Ukraine’s southeast that houses the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. 
  • It is about 40 km (25 miles) up the Dnieper River from the nuclear plant
• Nuclear Plant : Ukraine has four nuclear power stations comprising 15 reactors.
  • The plant at Zaporizhzhia has six reactors, which together produce about 5,700 MW of electricity. Nuclear energy caters to about half of Ukraine’s power demand. 
  • Ukraine is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapons state. Each of its nuclear facilities is under IAEA safeguards. That means every bit of nuclear material and fuel, every kilogram of uranium and every gram of plutonium, has to be accounted for and reported.
• Control : Russian forces attacked the plant in March 2022 and took control of it relatively easily.
• Safety : The Zaporizhzhia reactors are said to be quite safe. Gunfire or even shelling is unlikely to cause much harm or result in a nuclear accident. However, it is unclear how the reactors would face up to powerful bombs or missile attacks.
  • Recent issues : An escalation of the conflict in the town this month, including shelling and mortar attacks, some of which damaged parts of the nuclear station, has raised the spectre of nuclear disaster.
• Future prospect :the situation is extremely volatile and  It is expected that neither of the parties would be so reckless so as to directly bomb the reactor to trigger a nuclear explosion.

Source:IE