Andrei Ozharovsky: Ministry Of Energy Hides From Belarusians Some Important Information About BelNPP

Why does the first power unit shut down so often?

The other day, the Ministry of Energy of Belarus informed in its Telegram channel about another scheduled shutdown of the first unit of the Belarusian nuclear power plant. Chater97.org has discussed the situation with well-known Russian nuclear physicist Andrei Ozharovsky.

- The Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant has been disconnected from the network for the second time already. Recently, the first reactor, which was just turned on March 8, was shut down. The authorities explain it as "a scheduled one - routine maintenance works". Is such a number of shutdowns normal and should Belarusians be afraid of the BelNPP?

- "To begin with, you should have fears about any NPP, because it is a nuclear and radiation hazardous object. No matter what anyone says, any power plant, any reactor, even a research reactor, is dangerous. They can cause both a release of radionuclides and an explosion, as we saw during the Chernobyl accident, so you have to be wary.

I have seen a wonderful post on your Ministry of Energy's Telegram Channel; I would like to comment on it. Belarusian nuclear specialists learn something in terms of PR. If earlier they had never written anything about the shutdown, then this time they said so in advance, so one can assume that this time they didn't lie and the shutdown was planned.

The reason was given, and I quote: "to conduct studies of xenon transients in the reactor plant with reducing its power to a minimum controllable level." That's really what needs to be done. Anyone who has watched the Chernobyl series understands what an iodine pit, xenon poisoning mean - it's such a sword of Damocles over each of the power units. Basically, if you misbehave in a situation where the reactor is poisoned with xenon, you could end up with something similar to Chernobyl. Not a literal copy, of course, the reactor at the BelNPP is of a different type, but the nuclear reaction is the same: fission of uranium nuclei resulting in the formation of iodine, which then decays, and we get all sorts of unpleasant things.

This time I'm inclined to believe that the reactor was shut down routinely.

Yet something is missing here. What's missing is the reports of how long the shutdown will take, because it's possible that although they stopped the reactor to investigate iodine and xenon concentrations, it's possible that they'll be doing some other corrections as well.

If you briefly summarize the answer of the Ministry of Energy, the unit has not yet been put into commercial operation, it is in pilot operation, so we can turn it on and off as much as we want. I'm ready to accept this explanation. As long as, indeed, the unit is in such a strange phase, we shouldn't consider it operational at all.

However, then the question arises why Lukashenka organized this show on November 7, this "power up ceremony". It would be better to wait until the power unit is fully functional, until it is put into operation, then, maybe, it would be quite possible to hold some ceremonies, although, in my opinion, it is rather superfluous as well.

There is a conflict here between physical reality, between engineering practice and the PR excuse. For some reason your old man wants to make a PR on the nuclear power industry, it again says something about his intellectual level, and that is all.

The second thing, let's sort out how bad it is for the unit itself. It's okay, it's supposed to turn on and off in different modes. It's good that it turns off without exploding or releasing radiation, as far as we know. But these "on-offs" do not go without a trace - during the reactor shutdown cooling, there are loads on the vessel and pipelines, there is wear and tear of the equipment...

There are elements of the Belarusian economy for which frequent shutdowns of the nuclear power plant are not good. It is the power system of the country. It takes a hit with every switch-on and switch-off, because this is simply a too high unit capacity for a generator. Even when 1-2% of the power system is out, it's bad, but not catastrophic. But when we're talking about tens of percent of the total installed capacity of all generators in Belarus, the power system takes a hit, and bad things can happen out there. And it is not the nuclear power plant itself that has problems, but other power generators have problems, because they have to shut down quickly, when the atomists deign to turn their generators on, and to somehow quickly turn back on, if the atomists shut down their power generators. Again, I will say, if it's a planned case, the dispatcher must know it well in advance and give orders to raise the boilers to certain gas-fired power plants, or to neutralize the constant turning on and off in some other way.

The Ministry of Energy says that the necessary tests are being carried out with the switch-off and scheduled shutdown, but we know for a fact that previously there have been non-scheduled shutdowns, when there was a fire of imported instrument transformers. They burned out, there was a short circuit, it is not clear who let this happen and who was punished. It is not a standard situation, when any of the devices, not necessarily the reactor itself, fails. The main thing is that because of the failure of these devices, these transformers, the power unit itself was inoperable.

In Russia, shutdowns of reactors at nuclear power plants in operation do not stop after the power unit is transferred from pilot operation to full commercial operation by a purely formal decision of some commission. In fact, the power unit itself makes no difference. Failures will continue, I assert.

Almost every power unit at every nuclear power plant in the world shuts down for some reason at least once a year. Sometimes operators manage to notice some divergence of parameters and file it to the power supply system, then they try to call it a planned shutdown, as it usually happens in Russia, and sometimes the automatic protection system shuts down the reactor.

This is a more rare thing. About once every two years, every reactor in the world shuts down like this. This means that no one at all has time to react - neither the nuclear plant operator, nor the power system operator.

That's not bad, because it often helps to avoid accidents. That is fine by us if the automatic system is set up deliberately. It's better for a reactor to shut down than to explode. That is the special thing about the nuclear power industry. Atomists often criticize renewable energy, rightly pointing out that the wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine, but the reactor doesn't always work either. Nothing can be done about it, if it shuts down less often, it will be worse for safety, it will explode more often. So I say to the Belarusians that the shutdowns will continue, even after one more ceremony of commissioning the reactor. Whether there will be more or fewer shutdowns - we'll see.

A quote from the Ministry of Energy's Telegram channel: "The pilot operation stage takes a certain period in accordance with the regulations". What did they say here? The Ministry of Energy should have respected their readers and informed them that two months, two weeks, six months, I don't know, however much time is left for this pilot operation with constant shutdowns and power cycles. What is this "certain period" equal to in the case of the BelNPP? Just explain what period you're talking about.

We see that they are hiding something. I have a guess why they do not specify the period, and as far as I know the day of the ceremonial commissioning of the nuclear power plant is not specified.

I'm very much afraid that Lukashenka will schedule it on some date important to him, for example, he will order to put the plant into operation by May 9 - and that will be bad because not all the necessary tests have been done, not all the adjustments have been made.

Since he came up with this November 7 power up ceremony, which means nothing and after which the reactor dropped down one day later, it is possible that this politicization of nuclear energy will continue.

I want to ask the Ministry of Energy an open question: thank you for your clarification in Telegram that "the pilot operation stage takes a certain period of time in accordance with the regulations". Since you have regulations, what part of this period has already passed and what part is still to come? When will the first reactor of BelNPP be commissioned?

There is a remarkable paragraph at the end of the Ministry of Energy's report: "The number of planned shutdowns of the unit is connected with implementing test programs". Another question follows: if you have a test program, then you know exactly how many planned shutdowns are scheduled for the period from November 7 to March 10, and how many of these planned unit shutdowns are planned for the remaining period. I would very much like to know the number. Tell me: are there 12 planned shutdowns left, or 2, or 22? We don't know how many, so if the Department of Energy wants to play fair, they should tell that to the public.

I doubt they will. Frankly speaking, I know from all the experience of the BelNPP construction that Rosatom does not provide all the information to the Belarusian country. Sometimes the Ministry of Energy just copies some information from Rosatom documents without understanding the essence. I very much hope that this is not true, I hope that the Ministry of Energy is a solid body, that it has all the information, so I need two figures - when the pilot operation period will end and how many planned shutdowns of the unit are envisaged by the test program for this period.

And there is also such a classic attempt to manipulate in this Ministry of Energy report. I quote: "Everything is to work accurately and reliably, ensuring the complete safety of the unit." I want to tell you that the term "safety" has not only emotional, but also specific legal and physical sense. Any power unit belongs to the category of nuclear and radiation hazardous facilities. Radiation-hazardous means there may be a release of radionuclides, and nuclear-hazardous means there may be an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction and there may be an explosion like in Chernobyl.

Any attempt to call a nuclear power plant or a power unit a "safe facility", let alone to write about "complete safety of the unit", indicates that the Ministry of Energy is concerned with PR and with concealing real information.

I call on the Ministry of Energy to stop misinforming the population and start talking about the nuclear power plant as a nuclear and radiation hazardous facility. And to write in every report that they make sure that this danger is within some acceptable limits.

The power unit was safe before the nuclear reaction started, i.e. a year ago. Putting incorrect, misinforming labels leads to complacency and relaxation, which 35 years ago led to the Chernobyl accident, because Soviet engineers were convinced that the Soviet reactor was the safest.

Now I see a repetition of that situation. Calling a dangerous nuclear power plant "safe" by the officials should be a signal to the society - you are being deceived, you are being manipulated. Either the person knows that the nuclear power plant is dangerous and tries to manipulate, then he is a scoundrel. Or this person does not know that any reactor is dangerous and tells everyone that the reactor is "safe" - then this person is a fool. I really hope that there are no scoundrels or fools in the Ministry of Energy, and they will correct this rhetoric.

- On Sunday, March 7, independent Telegram channels and the mass media reported an emergency at the nuclear power plant caused by a breakdown of the reactor cooling system. To what extent is such breakdown possible at the BelNPP? What happens if the reactor cooling system breaks down at such plants?

- The cooling system is the Achilles' heel of any nuclear power plant, of any reactor, because if there is no heat sink and nuclear reactions causing residual heat output, we get heat balance disorders, heat energy accumulation, so-called thermal explosion, i.e. a Chernobyl type disaster. Everything overheats, water evaporates, pipelines, maybe even the reactor vessel rupture. So you have to take this seriously.

Let's take a step back, let's return to those unfortunate transformers. So far, the type, brand, and supplier of the allegedly defective transformers have not been called. We were told: the emergency unit shut down because one of the imported voltage measuring transformers burned out because of a short circuit. There is no clarity here. It is true, this object has nothing to do with the nuclear radiation safety, but the NPP can`t work without it. We haven't been told anything. What are you concealing? Say: this or that company supplied defective equipment, we've made a complaint, it promised to replace this equipment, or we, for example, are changing the Italian transformer for a Chinese one.

I don't think that the BelNPP will consider it necessary to inform the public about what they are doing there until something catastrophic happens, until radionuclides are released into the environment and gamma background increase can be measured with any instrument, it cannot be hidden. Then they will talk about it.

This is the example that they're not going to provide anything to the public. Even, let's say they had a problem with cooling. There's no way they would provide information about it because this system is directly related to safety. The public, based on the experience of dealing with the Belarusian atomists, understands that these people would conceal, and even more often, misinform. Unfortunately, mistrust is there, and it is well-founded.

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