Seizure of Ukraine plant sparks worries about radiation monitoring

Highlights:

• The number of civilian casualties is still unclear but the UN refugee agency says more than a million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began on 24 February with millions more on the move
• The first Ukrainian city to fall was Kherson, located where the Dnieper river meets the Black Sea
• Russian missiles have also been targeting the capital Kyiv and the second-largest city Kharkiv. A massive armoured convoy approaching Kyiv by road is currently stalled
• The southern port of Mariupol is still under siege and Russian troops are also headed towards another port, Odessa - capturing both would cut off Ukraine's maritime access
• Russian troops have also seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe's largest, after shelling it for hours on Friday. The move alarmed world leaders who said the attack could have unleashed a catastrophe.
• The now-retired Chernobyl plant, the site of the 1986 nuclear accident, is also under Russian control
• Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky has condemned the West for its continued refusal to enforce a no-fly zone over his country, saying; "All the people who die will die because of you".​
• The US and EU have imposed sweeping sanctions freezing Russian assets, targeting the country's central bank, Vladimir Putin and his inncer circle. The rouble has plunged amid the restrictions, which also hit trade, investments and travel.
• Independent media firms, including the BBC, have suspended work in Russia after it approved a draconian law censoring reporting of the war in Ukraine
• A slew of compainies - from Samsung to Airbnb and Cartier - have suspended exports to or operations in Russia citing the war.

Russia's seizure of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant has raised fears about access to radiation data, atomic experts said, although they stressed they did not see immediate radiological risks and a UN watchdog said its reactors were undamaged.

Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia plant - Europe's largest - after attacking it in the early hours of Friday, setting an adjacent five-storey training facility on fire, Ukrainian authorities said.

Russia has blamed the attack on the plant on Ukrainian saboteurs.

In a press conference on Friday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said no damage had been done to the Zaporozhzhia reactors and Ukrainian staff continued to operate the nuclear facilities while Russian forces controlled the area. 

The radiation monitoring system at the site was functioning normally and there had been no release of radioactive material, Grossi said.

Russia seizes Europe’s largest nuclear plant as sanctions mount

Park Jong-woon, a professor at the energy and electric engineering department of Dongguk University, said he did not think there was an immediate radiological threat posed by the plant's seizure, but added Russia could disrupt public access to radiation data to sow confusion.

"They can make people wonder, freak them out and spread fear," said Park, who worked at state-run power operators between 1996 and 2009, helping build nuclear reactors.

The fire at the Zaporizhzhia facility has since been extinguished but it had raised "a very real concern" about the potential for disaster, Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC, said.

"For example, the prospect of a widespread fire, although that appears not to be the case, could disable the plant's electrical systems and lead to an event very much like Fukushima if cooling is not restored in time," he said.

More broadly, experts expressed worries about access to real time data necessary for gauging the radiation situation on the ground.

The official website for radiation readings at the Zaporizhzhia site was not immediately accessible as of Friday afternoon, Lyman said.

Since last week's takeover by Russian forces of Chernobyl - the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster and now a defunct power plant - monitoring of radiation levels there has been more difficult, according to Kenji Nanba, who heads Fukushima University's Institute of Environmental Radioactivity and has been involved in a joint research project with Ukrainian scientists.

Ukraine reports deaths from nuclear plant fire

He said an official Ukrainian website with hourly radiation measurements from Chernobyl's exclusion zone had been down for days and that another site had gradually lost most of its real-time readings.

Although the damaged Chernobyl reactor is stable and is covered under a large new containment structure, Nanba said it was still crucial for researchers like himself to track radiation data at the site to make sure there were no sudden changes.

Elevated radiation readings were recorded near Chernobyl after it was taken over by Russian forces last week, but experts say those were most likely caused by military activity that kicked up irradiated dirt and earth into the air.

The fourth reactor at Chernobyl exploded in April 1986 during a botched safety test, sending clouds of radiation billowing across much of Europe. Estimates for the numbers of direct and indirect deaths from the disaster vary from the low thousands to as many as 93,000 extra cancer deaths worldwide.