The RADHUNTER is paying close attention to the situation with the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. All reactors at the Zaporizhzhia NPP have been shutdown for some time now, however power is needed to maintain cooling for spent fuel, as well as decay heat from fuel still in the reactors.
Side Note: The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is actually located in Enerhodar, just south of the city of Zaporizhzhia
With all 6 reactors shut down, the actual Nuclear Power Plant can’t generate electricity even for itself. It had been receiving power from Ukraine’s external power grid for several months, but sometime last week, power infrastructure feeding the plant was shelled. The plant also has emergency diesel generators that can supply sufficient power to run cooling pumps, control systems, and instrumentation to keep cooling water circulating to fuel ponds and reactor vessels, however, one of these diesel generators has also failed, meaning the current situation is definitely worrisome to put it mildly.
UPDATE 09 October 2025: According a report posted on Telegram, external power to the Zaporizhzhia NPP has been restored. Thus the plant has been returned to “normal” shutdown state, and the diesel generators can be returned to a backup status, however it should be noted that the plant’s installed generators will have logged many hundreds of additional hours of operation.
UPDATE 15 October 2025: The information posted based on a post on Telegram may or may not be true. The IAEA is reporting that the Zaporizhzhia NPP is still on emergency backup generators only. The IAEA is likely focusing on getting stable external power to the site, but under no circumstances should the IAEA take or condone any action that may intentionally or otherwise facilitate the restart of a Nuclear Power Plant so close to active front lines of a war. Again, I state what I said in the original article: World leaders need to immediately recognize this situation for what it is, and use any means necessary to create a situation where power and safe standby operation of the Zaporizhzhia NPP can be assured.
UPDATE 23 October 2025: The IAEA now states that the power lines to the Zaporizhzhia NPP has been restored after a month with no external power to the site
For a bit of good news, a facility like the Zaporizhzhia NPP has multiple layers of redundancy, so there several paths forward that would get the situation into a better state. First, and likely the priority, is to repair the external power line. This would put the plant in a “normal” (as close as normal can be for an NPP in a war zone) off-line status. Power for cooling would be provided by the grid, and the diesel generators would return to a backup capacity.
The second best short term path would be to repair the off-line generator to maintain at least current levels of redundancy. In this case, it is also critical that the security situation around the plan allow continued supply of diesel fuel (and parts, oil, etc.) to the generators.
Would re-starting a reactor so that the plant can supply some of it’s own powers be an option? Well, technically, Yes. There has been damage on the property of the Zaporizhzhia NPP from shelling and possibly sabotage, but as of what I have read to date, there is no damage that would prevent running at least one of the reactors, but of course that entails significant safety risks — not only to plant operators, but cooling a running reactor is even more critical than cooling spent fuel (in or out of the reactor). I sure hope that the NPP technical and engineering staff, and IAEA officials are first and foremost safe — and secondly looking at all possibilities to prevent another disaster.
What if the worst happens, and due to additional generator failures, inability to supply diesel fuel, or further attacks, all power is lost to the Zaporizhzhia NPP? In this case, we would be looking at a situation almost identical to the situation that occurred in March of 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Things may happen a little more slowly since the Fukushima Power Plant had some reactors running right up to the morning of the earthquake, but the scenario that would play out would be much the same. Water would boil off into steam creating the possibility of a steam or hydrogen explosion. In any case, contaminated steam would have to be vented to the atmosphere. If fuel temperatures could not be maintained, there would be the possibly of fuel meltdown, loss of containment, and further release of contaminants.
Where would the radiation go? Right now, and for the next few weeks at least, the prevailing winds would take radioactive contamination, including very dangerous products, westward — towards the rest of Ukraine, and other countries in Eastern Europe. It’s likely that the Russians know that contamination would be carried away from Russia.
World leaders need to immediately recognize this situation for what it is, and use any means necessary to create a situation where power and safe standby operation of the Zaporizhzhia NPP can be assured.
No matter how people view the situation, or what politicians say, any significant release of radiation from the Zaporizhzhia NPP will be the start of a militarily caused nuclear release that would effect a significant portion of Eastern Europe, and ultimately effect the entire world.
In other news, there have been reports of a Russian Submarine in distress in the Mediterranean Sea. I have read news reports that state that either an explosion has occurred or is likely to occur due to a fuel leak. I would like to note that the submarine in question is powered by diesel engines and batteries, and is thus considered a conventional submarine and is not nuclear powered.
This article will be updated as the situation warrants.
THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS MY PERSONAL OPINIONS ONLY.