The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been informed that Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) is transitioning a second reactor to hot shutdown to provide warm water and district heating, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said today.
The ZNPP, Europe’s largest such facility, stopped generating electricity for the grid in September last year. Since April, it has kept five reactors in cold shutdown and just one, currently unit 4, in hot shutdown to generate steam to process liquid radioactive waste and to heat water for Enerhodar, where most plant staff live. Ahead of the upcoming winter season, it started transferring unit 5 to hot shutdown this week after carrying out safety maintenance and testing at this unit.
The IAEA experts were told that a decision regarding how long unit 5 will remain in hot shutdown will be made once Enerhodar’s heating systems have stabilized after the beginning of the heating season, which starts in the coming days. They were also informed that there are no plans to transfer additional units to hot shutdown.
The IAEA has strongly encouraged the ZNPP to find an alternative, external source of steam generation to cover its needs and allow for all the reactors to be maintained in a cold shutdown state, in part because the destruction of the Kakhovka dam four months ago limited the site’s supplies of cooling water.
The IAEA experts at the site have earlier been informed that the ZNPP has initiated a process to buy an external steam generator by sending technical requirements to possible vendors. However, the installation of this equipment is not expected until the first part of 2024, possibly not until after the end of the heating season.
As previously reported, Ukraine’s national regulator, the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU), issued regulatory orders in June to limit the operation of all six units of the ZNPP to a cold shutdown state.