What if a nuclear weapon were used? At Zaporizhzhia, the large amounts of spent fuel storage make this risk even worse. Fallout would create a lethal radiation risk across the entire plant site and city of Enerhodar.
"The level of radioactive pollution, and most importantly the area of contamination, will be thousands of square kilometres of land and sea… it would be much, much worse than Fukushima and worse than Chernobyl."
Cizelj estimated a 30-kilometer radius. “It will be a tragedy for the local people,” he said, even if it would create no immediate casualties, but “for us in Europe … it would be a very unimportant event, in terms of consequences for health or anything else in the environment.”
At plants such as Zaporizhzhia, unless the fuel is constantly cooled, it can overheat, generating explosive gases, melting, or catching fire. This would also lead to a radiation release.
Detonating nuclear weapons above ground sends radioactive materials as high as 50 miles into the atmosphere. Large particles fall to the ground near the explosion-site, but lighter particles and gases travel into the upper atmosphere.
The study published in the journal Risk Analysis describes Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu as the island countries most capable of producing enough food for their populations after an “abrupt sunlight‐reducing catastrophe” such as a nuclear war, super volcano or asteroid strike.
The resulting inferno, and the blast wave that follows, instantly kill people directly in their path. But a new study finds that some people two to seven miles away could survive—if they're lucky enough to find just the right kind of shelter.
Zaporizhzhia: Not ideal, but not catastrophic
If an unexpected shell strike were to damage the Zaporizhzhia reactors, but not destroy the vessels completely, and knock out the backup cooling safety systems, as well as the backups to those backups, and so forth, then a full meltdown scenario could occur.
4. What would happen if a nuclear facility were bombed or destroyed? A meltdown or explosion at a nuclear facility could cause a large amount of radioactive material to be released into the environment. People at the nuclear facility would probably be contaminated and possibly injured if there were an explosion.
The capital of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Zaporizhzhia, has not been taken by the Russian army and remains under Ukrainian control.
As a result of the Chernobyl disaster, the Soviet Union created an exclusion zone with a radius of about 18.6 miles (30 km) centered on the nuclear power plant, covering 1,017 square miles (2,634 square km) around the plant.
If it blows up, it will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl! Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone! The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station is 310 miles from Chernobyl and has a total capacity of 5.7 gigawatts, enough to power over 4 million households.
It is thought that the reactor site will not become habitable again for at least 20,000 years, according to a 2016 report.
Key Facts. Both the 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility in Japan and the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986 required countermeasures to protect the public. This fact netted both accidents the highest rating on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES).
Based on the official reports, nearly 8,400,000 people in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine were exposed to the radiation, which is more than the population of Austria. About 155,000 sq. km of territories in the three countries were contaminated, which is almost half of the total territory of Italy.
The Chernobyl site and plant. The Chernobyl Power Complex, lying about 130 km north of Kiev, Ukraine, and about 20 km south of the border with Belarus, consisted of four nuclear reactors of the RBMK-1000 design (see information page on RBMK Reactors).
Is nuclear war likely? No. No matter the chances of nuclear war breaking out between the United States and Russia, there's a “0.0% chance” that Russia would survive the attack, according to Schwartz. This makes the actual possibility of nuclear war look pretty slim, no matter what Putin says.
BUILD UNDERGROUND
Building down to a depth of about ten feet will provide ample protection, but any deeper makes it hard to dig out in the event of a collapse.
Russia has threatened that it is prepared to blow up Europe's largest nuclear power plant, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, in the latest indication that Russia's war in Ukraine could be headed towards a nuclear disaster.
Zaporizhzhia is located in southern Ukraine and serves as Europe's largest nuclear power plant. Running at full capacity, the plant is capable of producing 6,000 megawatts of electricity.
The plant generates nearly half of the country's electricity derived from nuclear power, and more than a fifth of total electricity generated in Ukraine. The Zaporizhzhia thermal power station is nearby.
But while Russian forces control the plant on territory that Moscow allegedly has annexed, Kyiv maintains that the plant and territory are Ukrainian, a position supported by virtually the entire world.
But the vast majority of the human population would suffer extremely unpleasant deaths from burns, radiation and starvation, and human civilization would likely collapse entirely.
The safest place: the corners of a room, author Ioannis Kokkinakis of Cyprus' University of Nicosia said in a statement. “Even in the front room facing the explosion, one can be safe from the high airspeeds if positioned at the corners of the wall facing the blast,” Kokkinakis added.
THE NEXT 48 HOURS
You have been sheltered because of the potential for dangerous levels of radiation in the first 24 hours following a nuclear detonation. After 24 hours, outdoor radiation levels will have fallen significantly but may still warrant protective measures in your area.