By John LaForge
The cooling pond at the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power complex in Ukraine is in danger of collapse as a result of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and the draining of its reservoir, according to the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN). Without the reservoir on the other side to counteract it, the internal pressure of the water in the waste fuel cooling pool could break the dyke around it, the IRSN said in a June 7 report. Officials at Ukraine’s Energoatom corporation, replied that any collapse of the dike would be partial “even in a worst-case,” and that there would still be sufficient water to keep the six reactor cores and the waste fuel cool. Since the collapse of the Kakhovka dam on June 6, its reservoir has been draining into the Dnipro River, has lost over three-quarters of its volume of water, and was expected to drop below the water intakes used to pump water into ponds used to cool the reactors, the waste fuel rods, and the diesel generators at the site. The Zaporizhzhia reactors have been shut down for the past eight months, but fuel inside reactors and in the cooling ponds still requires cooling. — Reuters, June 12; The Guardian, June 8, 2023
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