After About 600 Hours, 64 Workers at Ukraine's Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Finally Relieved

The New York Times reports that "After more than three weeks without being able to leave the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine, 64 workers were able to be rotated out, the plant said on Sunday."Staff at the plant, which includes more than 200 technical personnel and guards, had not been able to rotate shifts since February 23, a day before Russian forces took control of the site, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which serves as a nuclear watchdog for the United Nations. In a Facebook post, the plant said that to rotate the 64 workers, 46 volunteers were sent to the site to make sure operations at the plant could continue. It was unclear whether the remaining workers would also have an opportunity to be rotated. For weeks, the International Atomic Energy Agency, known as the I.A.E.A., has expressed concern for the workers at the Chernobyl site, calling for the staff to be rotated for their safety and security. Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the I.A.E.A., said last week that he remained "gravely concerned about the extremely difficult circumstances for the Ukrainian staff there." The I.A.E.A. said on March 13 that workers were no longer doing repairs and maintenance, partly because of "physical and psychological fatigue...." Workers at the site have faced a number of issues recently, including a power outage and limited communication. Ukrainian government officials said on March 9 that damage by Russian forces had "disconnected" the plant from outside electricity, leaving the site dependent on power from diesel generators and backup supplies. Power was restored a few days later, and the plant resumed normal operating conditions. Earlier this month a former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (from 1998 to 2007) argued in the Wall Street Journal that"An unappreciated motive for Russia's invasion of Ukraine is that Kyiv was positioning itself to break from its longtime Russian nuclear suppliers, as the U.S. was encroaching on Russia's largest nuclear export market...." "The project was intended to allow Ukraine to store this fuel safely without shipping it back to Russia for reprocessing. The processing and storage facility was completed in 2020, and Holtec and SSE Chernobyl were loading the canisters to be stored when the war began on February 24..."By taking over Chernobyl, Russia gives itself control of the disposal of its spent fuel, which it can store in canisters at the site or ship to a reprocessing facility in Russia. Either way, this represents hundreds of millions of dollars for Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear enterprise.... The timing is telling. In November 2021, Ukraine's leaders signed a deal with Westinghouse to start construction on what they hoped would be at least five nuclear units - the first tranche of a program that could more than double the number of plants in the country, with a potential total value approaching $100 billion. Ukraine clearly intended that Russia receive none of that business.

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