What is considered the most dangerous nuclear power plant in the world?
We often talk about Chernobyl, now abandoned, and Fukushima, the victim of a colossal and unexpected event. But what is actually the most dangerous nuclear power plant in the world?
In the shadow of Mount Ararat, Armenia's beloved and national symbol, sits a 31-year-old nuclear power plant that is no less emblematic of the country's determination and pain.
The Metsamor power plant is one of the few remaining nuclear reactors of this type, built without primary containment structures, that is, without a safety building that contains materials and radiation in the event of a reactor malfunction. All five of its sister generation first generation water-moderated Soviet units are in the process of being divested at present or in the near future, but the other four do not have a quality, so to speak, of Metsamor: this is found on a land among the most seismic on Earth.
So we have a conceptually very old reactor in a dangerous location due to the intensity and frequency of earthquakes. For example, in 1988 a short distance away there was an earthquake with an intensity of 6.8 on the Richter scale. A perfect mix for a disaster.
A few years ago, the European Union envoy called the plant "a danger to the whole region", but Armenia then refused the EU's offer of a loan of 200 million euros (289 million dollars) to finance the closure of Metsamor. The US government, which has called the plant "old and dangerous," has funded a study urging the construction of a new plant.
Plans to replace Metsamor after 2016 – with a new nuclear power plant in the same location – are underway. But until then, Armenia has no choice but to keep Metsamor's turbines spinning. As the Armenians learned with the freezing cold and dark days when the plant was closed for several years, Metsamor supplies more than 40% of the energy to a nation isolated from its neighbors and closed to other energy sources. In the choice between cold death and nuclear risk they choose the latter.
Metsamor is also only 10km from the warm border with Turkey. In the event of an accident, the neighboring country would feel the damage strongly. Yet it seems that there is no rush in disputing the plant.
It seems that Armenia wants to invest 5 billion in a larger and more powerful but more modern Russian VVER1000 reactor. For now, three million Armenians prefer energy with risk to nothing.
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The article Which is considered the most dangerous nuclear power plant in the world? comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/quale-viene-considerato-il-piu-pericoloso-impianto-nucleare-al-mondo/ on Tue, 31 May 2022 20:34:29 +0000.