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Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

Decommissioned nuclear power plant in Ukraine

  • 15 min read
  • 5 chapters
A stitched panorama view of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant site in Ukraine, pictures taken in June 2013. Descriptions of the buildings from left to right: First half of the New Safe Confinement - a
Ingmar Runge · CC BY-SA 3.0

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Originally named the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant of V. I. Lenin after the founding leader of the Soviet Union, the plant was commissioned in phases with the four reactors entering commercial operation between 1978 and 1984. On 26 April 1986, in what became known as the Chernobyl disaster, reactor No. 4 suffered a catastrophic explosion and meltdown; as a result of this, the power plant is now within a large restricted area known as the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Both the zone and the power plant are administered by the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management. The three other reactors remained operational post-accident maintaining a capacity factor between 60 and 70%. In total, units 1 and 3 had supplied 98 terawatt-hours of electricity each, with unit 2 slightly less at 75 TWh. In 1991, unit 2 was placed into a permanent shutdown state by the plant's operator due to complications resulting from a turbine fire. This was followed by Unit 1 in 1996 and Unit 3 in 2000. Their closures were largely attributed to foreign pressures. In 2013, the plant's operator announced that units 1–3 were fully defueled, and in 2015 entered the decommissioning phase, during which equipment contaminated during the operational period of the power station will be removed. This process is expected to take until 2065 according to the plant's operator. Although the reactors have all ceased generation, Chernobyl maintains a large workforce as the ongoing decommissioning process requires constant management.

From 24 February to 31 March 2022, Russian troops occupied the plant as part of their invasion of Ukraine.

Construction

In 1966, plans to construct Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant were first conceived, during the development of nuclear production of energy in the Soviet Union. Construction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant began in 1972. The plant was meant to have 12 units, made up of six construction phases, and if completed would have been the largest nuclear power plant in the world. The plant would eventually consist of four RBMK-1000 reactors, each capable of producing 1,000 megawatts (MW) of electric power (3,200 MW of thermal power), and the four together produced about 10% of Ukraine's electricity. Like other sites which housed multiple RBMK reactors such as Kursk, the construction of the plant was also accompanied by the construction of a nearby city to house workers and their families. In the case of the ChNPP, the new city was Pripyat. During construction, a mobile crane was deployed and was used to lift pre-fabricated builds weighing up to 640 tons. It was the only crane of such design in the country, and was also used to install the nuclear reactor. Over 20 specialized organizations involved with the construction were working simultaneously, specializing in electric wiring, heat insulation, hydraulic engineers, chemical protection, etc. The work would be coordinated and directed by the headquarters, which was managed by site manager Vasilii Trofimovich Kizima. Most welders formerly served in the tank forces, which gave them endurance training prior to becoming construction workers at Chernobyl. Concrete pouring was done as high as 50 meters above ground level, and the Komsomol-and-youth brigade of Viacheslav Volkov completed carcassing the reactor shaft by 1974.

Operations

Construction of the station concluded in the late 1970s, with reactor No. 1 being commissioned in 1977. It was the third Soviet RBMK nuclear power plant, after the Leningrad and Kursk power plants, and the first plant on Ukrainian soil. The completion of the first reactor in 1977 was followed by reactor No. 2 in 1978, No. 3 in 1981, and No. 4 in 1983. Two more blocks, numbered five and six, of more or less the same reactor design, were planned at a site roughly a kilometre from the contiguous buildings of the four older blocks. This is similar to the layout of units 5 and 6 at Kursk and shows the similarity in design between the RBMK sites. Reactor No. 5 was around 70% complete at the time of Reactor 4's explosion and was scheduled to come online approximately seven months later, in November 1986. In the aftermath of the disaster, construction on No. 5 and 6 was suspended, and eventually cancelled on April 20, 1989, days before the third anniversary of the 1986 explosion. At one point six other reactors were planned on the other side of the river, bringing the total to twelve.

Reactors No. 3 and 4 were second-generation units, whereas No. 1 and 2 were first-generation units, like those in operation at the Kursk power plant. Second-generation RBMK designs were fitted with a more secure containment structure, visible in photos of the facility.

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