Dmytro Gumenyuk, head of the safety analysis department of the State Scientific and Technical Center for Nuclear and Radiation Safety, details how exactly the enemy could damage the Zaporizhzhya NPP and the main dangers it would pose.
no serious damage to the reactors. that s the good news. the good news might stop there. still, the threat to these plants is immense. what do you see? yeah, i think you re absolutely right. there s no evidence of reactor core damage up to the moment. but the issue is there s so many collateral systems, if you like, that are much more exposed. for example, backup power generation would be absolutely essential if the grid electricity were cut off. you have the fuel supply for that. so these systems are much less hardened. and as the chaos and as the troops are coming in, those are the systems particularly vulnerable. there s the option as well. the possibility of, you know, a stray artillery shell coming into the spent fuel pool. these could be real catastrophes. what about the human toll?
1:51 this afternoon. trust us on this, it feels a lot more dramatic than these pictures look, but take a look. this was inside the cnn studios as it rocked. in no time at all it seemed like everyone in d.c. was out on the sidewalk overloading cellular networks as they tried to get in touch with friends and family. the quake was centered in virginia, about 88 miles south of washington. people in new england even felt the shaking. now, the east coast is waiting to see where hurricane irene will hit. we ll get an update on that forecast in a little bit, but we want to start with the breaking news, and incredible pictures, out of libya today. in one of the most dramatic developments in the five months since the rebellion started, rebel fighters captured moammar gadhafi s compound in tripoli today. cnn s fred pleitgen joins us now, i know, in fact, you are in benghazi which is headquarters for the rebels and entirely rebel city for some time now. tell me, first, the reaction whe
undergoes the first process that heats the water. in the massive turbine room. 2,000 mega was of power is generated. after six years of use, the uranium fuel is transferred to spent fuel pool. the pools are built into bedrock with walls made of steel reinforced concrete. all of the spent fuel that s been used at units three since 1976 is in that spent fuel pool. which is under about 25 feet of water. it not only helps keep the fuel cool, but also provides protection from harmful radiation. this pool is actually at capacity. so in the next year, we plan on taking out the oldest fuel and transferring it to dry cast storage. we can actually store that used fuel outdoors. in concrete bunker, three backup diesel generators are ready to provide power to the plant black out, earthquake,
and i still say the biggest concern is what s going on inside the reactor cores. keeping those cores cool is still the single-most important task facing them at the moment. mr. acton, i think back to the bp oil spill, that disaster was unprecedented. and they were really just coming up with the playbook as they went along the way. is there a playbook at all for the disaster we re seeing, or are they really looking at an unprecedented disaster and having to make this up as they go along? well, there was a playbook, but they actually ran out of that playbook at about 10:00 a.m. friday morning three weeks ago. they ve been improvising as they go along. this is a disaster which in terms of its complexity, having three reactors causing trouble and a spent fuel pool of four reactors in trouble is