Radioactive leak at major Ukrainian nuclear plant – report
Source: rt.com
Two documents released by LifeNews appear to show that the plant's officials put deliberately misleading information on their website. The documents – both addressed to the head of the regional emergency services – state that radiation levels at the plant on Sunday and Monday were 16.8 times higher than the legally permitted norm.By Monday, the levels had slightly increased – growing from 16.3 to 16.8 times higher, and Unit 6 was still shut down, the report said, contradicting the plant's statements that the problem had been fixed and that the plant was operating normally.On Sunday, one reactor at the plant was automatically shut down after a glitch, becoming the second halt in operations in recent weeks. The reactor was running at 40 percent of nominal power, the plant's official website said, adding that radiation at the facility being at the level of 8-12 microroentgens an hour.The error was later announced to have been corrected, and the troubled unit – Power Block # 6 – was plugged back into the network.On November 28, Zaporozhye's Unit 3 was switched off for almost a week. The shutdown, which was reportedly caused by a short circuit, was made public five days later, when Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk revealed it during the first meeting of his new Cabinet.Regarding the November incident, Ukrainian authorities have contacted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The agency was informed that "a reactor at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant remained safely shut down following a short circuit in the plant’s transformer yard last week," its December 3 statement said.Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate has said no radioactive materials were released because of the shutdown, the IAEA added. The incident was preliminarily estimated to be a level 0-rated event on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, which ranges from 0 to 7.Zaporozhye nuclear power plant is one of the four nuclear power plants in the country, which together supply a large part of Ukraine's energy needs. The Zaporozhye plant alone, Europe's largest, supplies at least one-fifth of the country’s power needs. It is the world’s fifth-largest nuclear power plant.Source: rt.com
