http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2010/kurskNPP_safetyAccident at Russia’s Kursk Nuclear Power Plant reveals blatant disregard of safety standards: Is the Russian nuclear industry headed for a meltdown?
ST. PETERSBURG – Incidents of various degrees of severity are not uncommon at Russian nuclear power plants (NPPs), but when repairs take longer than a month – as was the case with Reactor 1 of Kursk NPP, which was scrammed on July 22 and only went online on August 31 – concerns arise that serious damage must have occurred. A scrutiny of what happened at Kursk NPP seems to indicate the frightening possibility that a malfunction involving any RBMK reactor may turn out to be as devastating as the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Andrei Ozharovsky, 06/09-2010 - Translated by Maria Kaminskaya
Kursk NPP: How extensive was the damage?
Kursk NPP is located in Kurchatov – a town bearing the name of the prominent Soviet nuclear physicist, and the man behind the Soviets’ A-bomb, Igor Kurchatov. It stands 40 kilometers southwest of Kursk, a large city in Central European Russia, and operates four power units with pressurized-tube reactors with a total capacity of 4 million kilowatts. Last July 22, an incident took place at the plant that put Reactor 1, an RBMK-1000 installation, out of commission and led to what later turned out to be five weeks of ongoing repairs. Even more disturbing, what information was finally made available about the incident did not come through the official channels from the state nuclear corporation Rosatom or Kursk NPP’s head company, the nuclear power plant operator Rosenergoatom, but from Kursk employees.
<snip>
Kursk’s employees in for a meltdown of their own
According to PRoAtom forum visitors, the all-hands-on-deck emergency repairs and the general disarray have been greatly aggravating the situation in Kursk.
“The
management have been forcing operational personnel to carry out radiation-hazardous works, which they made compulsory for them. These people are unprepared to perform such work to begin with, they are not qualified enough, plus all of this is done for no extra pay, during off-hours, and without any papers or documents drawn up… Also, they’ve been bullied by threats to fail them later on some exams like, whatever, industrial hygiene or something, and redundancies for failure to pass. It’s a total mess. Everyone knows Kursk Region is poor and there aren’t many jobs, and the plant pays well enough by comparison, so people are in fear for their jobs, in fear of the bosses… And the bosses are using it as they wish, plugging the holes left by their screw-ups with their employees’ health.”
<snip>
“Unprofessionalism is when…instead of scramming the reactor, they’ll just log non-existent defects in a perfectly well-functioning coolant flow meter in that channel and go home like it’s no big deal. Those who’ve allowed this accident to happen, they’ve long had a screw or two loose, from all the pressure of achieving high performance rates and being afraid of losing their cushy jobs. And the chances are nil that they’ll get their heads right again any time soon.”
<snip>
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
