DANGERS OF THE PEACEFUL ATOM

Thirty years after the worst technological disaster in history - the accident at energy unit 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP) on 26 April 1986 - mankind has to acknowledge that risks associated with nuclear power have not yet been fully studied. According to an annual report issued by the IAEA, 438 nuclear reactors were in operation in the world as of the end of 2014, and each of them, in essence, is a time bomb. The peaceful atom may spin out of control as a result of a random factor - an error, negligence or technical wear and tear, or as a result of natural disasters. In recent years, people have been talking about new dangers - the threat of cyber and terrorist attacks.

Accident is a chain of unrevealed trends

The scale of the Chernobyl disaster are still stunning. A fire that lasted nearly two weeks triggered the release of about 190 t of dangerous radioactive substances into the atmosphere. The worst-affected were northern parts of Ukraine's Kiev and Zhytomyr regions, Belarus's Gomel Region, and Russian's Bryansk Region. Hundreds of thousands of people had to leave their homes. Many of them, like thousands of rescue workers, died from effects of radiation sickness. Six to 7m people currently live in the radiation-hit territory which has an area of 150,000 to 160,000 sq. km. According to Ukraine's Ministry of Health, 2.4m Ukrainians, of them 428,000 children, suffer from cancer and other diseases.

Many documents related to the Chernobyl disaster are still "classified", which gives rise to different rumors - ostensibly, what happened was not an accident but, perhaps, a real crime. There are no answers to this question yet, but the fact remains that the Soviet leadership concealed the actual scale of the tragedy for several days. The most likely reason for such behavior was banal confusion. Twenty-five years on, the developments repeated themselves on a smaller scale in Japan, where as a result of history's worst earthquake and a subsequent tsunami, an accident occurred at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. It was not until 2016 that the nuclear power plant operator - Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) - apologized for the fact that it had only reported the core meltdown in three reactors at the plant two months after the disaster. In March 2016, TEPCO conceded that employees could have recognized a meltdown if they had acted according to their job instructions. As a result, members of the inquiry commission concluded that TEPCO has no standards by which one could identify a core meltdown.

Feral powers of nature versus "domesticated" atom

It turns out that there are simply no one-hundred-per-cent safe technologies in nuclear power plants that would insure us against human error or violence of nature. After the accident, Japan's most serious problem has been radioactive water that is used to cool the reactors and accumulates in underground premises of the plant and then seeps into groundwater or goes into the oceans. A significant excess of the established norms of radiation has been detected in silt at the bottom of all rivers in the Japanese prefecture of Fukushima. Currently, attempts are being made to freeze soil to build a "defence wall" around the reactors. But it will take the facility decades to become completely safe, and financial damage will total more than 100bn dollars, while environmental damage cannot even be assessed at all. Moreover, the Fukushima accident resulted in about 400,000 people evacuated, many of whom have still not returned to their homes, and a 20-km area around the nuclear plant power remains uninhabited.

In mid-April 2016, Japanese islands once again suffered a seismic activity that caused deaths and destruction, but, fortunately, not as massive as in 2011. An earthquake with a 6.5-point magnitude occurred in Kumamoto Prefecture in the southern island of Kyushu on 15 April. Incidentally, in mid-April, earthquakes also occurred in Myanmar, Ecuador, and Chile almost simultaneously with Japan. All of those countries are on the edges of a tectonic plate, as well as the western part of the United States with its famous San Andreas Fault. But what the Japanese especially fear is not even an earthquake, but the fact that nearby is the Sendai nuclear power plant, two reactors in which are currently the only operational ones in Japan. Experts try to soothe the population, telling them that the plant could withstand an even bigger earthquake. However, the Fukushima nuclear power plant also did withstand an earthquake, while the accident at the plant was caused by the fact that already during the tsunami and subsequent consequences there was a disconnection of all systems of normal and emergency cooling of the active zone of the reactors.

Regarding the Metsamor nuclear power plant, Armenia puts forward the same arguments - the plant, it says, withstood the earthquake in Spitak in 1988 (even though it was shut down the same year but re-launched in 1995). However, Armenia's wish to continue to use the station does not mean that it is safe, and what Yerevan is doing is nothing other than playing with a fire. A potential danger from the nuclear power plant has been mentioned more than once at different levels at several international organizations. Azerbaijan has also constantly recalled this at different organizations - the UN, PACE, and the IAEA. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov have recently once again reminded the international community about this threat at the nuclear security summit in Washington.

The head of the information department at the Republican Centre of the Seismological Service of the Azerbaijani National Academy of Sciences, Vusala Rafiqqizi, said in an interview with R+ that the South Caucasus is in a high seismic activity zone and, theoretically, considering that the Metsamor nuclear power plant is quite old, a major earthquake in Armenia could well destroy the plant. Naturally, should this happen, this will affect not only Armenia but other regional countries as well, including Azerbaijan.

Vusala Rafiqqizi gave her assurances that Azerbaijan's Seismological Service has the latest software, its centres are equipped with modern technology, and there is cooperation with Japanese and US counterparts. But, as the recent earthquake in Japan showed, even though man has long learnt to control the atom, it is not yet possible to predict when an earthquake will happen or how big it will be.

Especially as not only earthquakes, but also tsunamis, floods, and fires may bear potential risks for nuclear power plants. A year ago, a major fire was getting very close to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the fire zone was just 20 kilometres off the concrete-covered hotbed of radioactivity and the exclusion zone around it. There was the danger of a residual radioactive substance catching a fire. Back then, Chris Busby, secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, said that the world faced a new Chernobyl threat.

Worn nuclear power plants

But even without natural disasters, an accident may occur at nuclear power plants whose service life ended a long time ago. As of the end of October 2014, more than 50 per cent of all the 438 nuclear power reactors operating in the world operated for more than 30 years, and 14 per cent of these reactors were operated for over 40 years. Incidentally, these include the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant, which was built in the 1970s with the same warranty period of 40 years, which makes it very easy to do calculations. Governments in countries that operate old nuclear power plants keep postponing their temporary shutdown due to the fact that the stations generate a large percentage of electricity. So, the authorities in Armenia, where numerous rallies have been held following an increase in energy tariffs, have decided to extend the service life of the nuclear power plant for another 10 years. The Armenian nuclear power plant generates up to 45 per cent of all electricity. At this technically obsolete nuclear power plant, there are often radiation emissions, it pollutes waters in nearby rivers that are used to cool the reactor, and there are also suspicions that nuclear wastes from the Metsamor nuclear power plant may be buried in Azerbaijani territories that are occupied by Armenia and inaccessible for international monitoring.

Nuclear power plants in Ukraine - the South Ukrainian, the Zaporizhia one, and the Rivne one - also raise certain questions. According to some reports, background radiation periodically rises there, and half of unscheduled repairs are conducted on the generator cooling system. Particular concerns arose after a serious cooling in relations between Ukraine and Russia, because all nuclear power plants were built in Soviet times and were meant to use Russian technology and Russian heat-producing elements, albeit Ukraine is now trying to use US ones.

The problem of wear and tear on nuclear power plants is relevant not only for post-Soviet countries. For example, Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg are calling on the Belgian government to suspend the operation of the third reactor at the Doel nuclear power plant in Flanders and energy unit two at Tihange nuclear power plant in Wallonia. Their alarm was caused by technical incidents that led to an automatic shutdown of the reactor and by the state of the steel hulls of some of them. The nuclear power plant Doel is one of the oldest in Europe - it was launched in 1974. But for the time being the reactors at Doel and Tihange provide for 55 per cent of the country's electricity needs.

New threats

The threat of cyber attacks has come to be a new problem for nuclear power plants. According to Chatham House, cyber security is still something new for the nuclear industry. This conclusion is based on more than 30 interviews with nuclear power plant managers and officials from different countries, as well as information about cyber incidents at facilities around the world that have not received wide publicity. Opponents of the theory about this kind of a vulnerability of nuclear power plants say that plants are not connected to the internet, and it is simply impossible to trigger a major incident by means of a cyber attack anyway. However, the report says that there is no guarantee to believe it 100 per cent. Dozens of nuclear power plants have systems that are connected to the internet, owning companies increase the number of digital "loopholes" in nuclear power plants, introduce operational monitoring systems for data collection, and seek to increase production efficiency. In addition, engineers and contractors around the world regularly bring to nuclear facilities their personal computers that connect to computer systems at nuclear power plants. For example, in 2003, at Davis-Besse nuclear power station in Ohio (USA) an engineer used an encrypted VPN connection to gain access from his home to equipment in the station. Trojan software from his home computer infected the nuclear power station's computer system, making the key control system getting disconnected under a flurry of viral traffic. In 2006, at Browns Ferry in Alabama, the main security system at the plant was congested with web traffic, which almost led to a dangerous accident. In 2008, at the Edwin Hatch Nuclear Power Plant in the state of Georgia a contractor used an ordinary temporary connection to connect to the corporate network and thus triggered the shutdown of the system. Finally, we all remember the Stuxnet virus hitting Iran's nuclear facilities.

It has been said for very a long time that terrorists may attack nuclear power plants. But, perhaps, the first time this threat was felt this close was after details of the March attacks in Brussels were published. As it turned out, the organizers of the attacks spent months watching the home of the manager of the Belgian nuclear programme. They also shot a security guard of the Tihange nuclear power plant in order to steal his pass. It is even possible that the Tihange nuclear power plant was the primary target of the Belgian terrorists, but after following the arrest of the main suspect in the Paris terrorist attacks, Salah Abdeslam, the Belgian terrorists decided to hurry and, instead of attacking the nuclear power plant, they attacked the airport and the metro. Incidentally, it is also known that in 2014, there was an act of sabotage at the Doel nuclear power plant, which led to an emergency termination of the operation of one of its energy units. The culprit was never found, but it was found out that a former technician from this station was fighting in Syria.

Is there an alternative?

The greatest number of new nuclear power plants being built currently is in Asia. According to forecasts, by 2030, global nuclear power capacity will increase by 8 per cent under a pessimistic scenario and by 88 per cent under an optimistic one. This is cost effective and, therefore, the construction of nuclear power plants will continue. However, the events in Ukraine and Japan showed that the consequences of possible accidents - human and financial consequences - may be much more serious than benefit from using nuclear power plants. And affected more than anyone else are ordinary people. For this reason, in Japan, for example, an initiative is in the pipeline to provide residents within a radius of 30 km from a nuclear power plant with the right to decide on whether suspended reactors should be restarted or new ones should be built. The same kind of a right should probably be exercised on a larger scale - but how about those countries that fear atomic neighbourhood?

Is there an alternative to nuclear power? There is, and it lies in the use of energy sources that are renewable and completely safe for humans, such as the sun, water, and wind. According to specialists, technologies for the use of alternative energy will grow every year, and Azerbaijan, incidentally, has great prospects in this field. The head of the Azerbaijani State Agency on Alternative Energy, Akim Badalov, has said that alternative energy is a priority for the country, despite the fact that Azerbaijan is traditionally a country with an oil and gas economy.

At the same time, attention should be paid to statistics to understand how promising this field is. At present, the power of Azerbaijan's energy system is about 7,200 megawatts, while the aggregate potential of alternative and renewable energy sources in Azerbaijan is over 12,000 megawatts.

Most of this country's potential in this field comes from solar energy (5,000 megawatts), wind energy constitutes 4,500 megawatts, biomass 1,500 megawatts, geothermal energy 800 megawatts, and the remaining 350 megawatts come from small hydropower plants.

For example, Baku has started thinking of building a wind farm on platforms in the Caspian Sea, which will be - just like the Oily Rocks once were - the first such project in the world. Our country has all opportunities to become the region's scientific hub in this field.