“WE ARE CAPABLE OF MAKING EVERYTHING FALL INTO ITS PLACE” Part 1 "Compromises Have a Price"

Dear friends, I am starting a series of publications under the general title

“WE ARE CAPABLE OF MAKING EVERYTHING FALL INTO ITS PLACE”

This is Part 1 "Compromises have a price".

There will be a continuation of 12 separate and conditionally completed parts, focusing on the extremely important chronology and factual aspects of figuring the nuclear industry and the power system of Ukraine in this war...

This will be a professional talk whether we are able to take responsibility for our actions, think critically and act according to the circumstances that this war has brought to us ...

This is a conversation about priorities and how to achieve them in the best possible way, under unknown circumstances and risks that went beyond the design basis of nuclear power plants.

It's about betrayal and resistance, it's about never giving up....

It’s about the history before and during the war, with more focus on what goes after our victory in this war....

It's about everything that surrounds us, what we are proud of, and why we don't deserve sympathy...

This is for my colleagues and friends with whom I was lucky to communicate as with the best ones in the business...

It's about how we will eventually put everything in its place, because this is the most important ability of Faith in our capabilities and resilience to any circumstances in the most complex and dangerous technology of today.

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WE ARE CAPABLE OF MAKING EVERYTHING FALL INTO ITS PLACE!!!

Part I

Compromises Have a Price

"The compromise between food and deadly poison is death" (Atlanteus shrugged)

Any period of this war singles out those sons and daughters of Ukraine who become examples of selflessness and uncompromising resistance to harsh circumstances. The wave of the battle always brings to the forefront such fighters like Zaluzhny, Kryvonos, Chervinsky, Kudrytsky, ... and the countless army of indomitable Ukrainians who, without regard to personal interests, do what is impossible for the survival of the nation…

?The russians have never been able to look into the depths of the mentality of a Ukrainian, who, once he started acting, always turned the enemy's path into a nightmare. This is extremely inconvenient for the internal enemy, because Ukrainians have broken the stratagem of a brilliant ‘special operation’ – Defeat in Three Days, and after a shameful failure, the strangers cannot do harm and go unnoticed.

Over forty years of personal experience in the nuclear industry of Ukraine, it was impossible not to pay attention to some of my former colleagues who were fascinated by the success of russian nuclear technology, so they deliberately promoted narratives, arguments and contributed to the negative influence of russia, which lured experienced licensed personnel to new russian nuclear power plant projects abroad, some of whom later became conductors of nuclear terrorism by Rosatom during occupation of the Zaporizhzhya NPP.

The russians were particularly sensitive about the diversification of Westinghouse nuclear fuel and the so-called "zero return" of spent nuclear fuel and its radiation equivalent, reprocessing products for long-term storage. But no less sensitive was the struggle against our efforts to have energy interconnections with the European Union's energy system and the independent existence from the russia’s unified energy system.

There is something personal to recall here, because thanks to the efforts of russian agents of influence, I was twice suspected of treason against Ukraine under Article 111 of the Criminal Code. In the first case, for assisting the US Government in promoting a pilot project to diversify Westinghouse nuclear fuel at the Zaporizhzhya NPP (October 14, 2004), and in the second case, for blocking the supply of counterfeit spare parts for diesel generators for ZNPP Units 1 and 2 from russia (February 7, 2017).

This prevents me from remaining impartial, but it does not deter me from asking a simple question: What are doing the ardent supporters of "greatness of the russian world" during the war, who, "by virtue of circumstances," became "elected" to the helm of the most important for the survival of the Country - the energy sector, and - is all this consistent with the interests of Ukraine? Yes, this question is for those who, using the haze of war, are working for the enemy from within, as a convinced supporter of the "russian world", or just a useful fool who remained "invisible" to that part of the legislative, executive and judicial branches that could be most interested in comparing reality and verified facts...

Throughout the years of independence, the main destructive tools of russian influence on the nuclear industry have always been "our people" who got into it with the assistance of politicians biased by russia, or due to ordinary human weakness, greed and fear, and became convenient tools in the hands of the enemy. These larvae have always had unlimited opportunities to lobby for russian equipment, works and services. They also found motivation to influence the downtime of nuclear power units and the number of zeros added to cost estimates through artificial technological failures. Circumstances made things so confusing that this very people were in charge for cooperation with the WANO Moscow center, and generously shared sensitive data on emergency power supply of nuclear power plants, emergency response, modernization programs and life extension. Even data on reserve diesel fuel stocks for emergency power supply of safety systems in the event of a station blackout were transmitted.

As an example, the russian supplier of works, equipment and services, Diacont (Association of machine-building plants of russia), was allowed to modernize industrial television control systems for the process rooms of the reactor and turbine compartments, to video monitor the nuclear fuel transshipment system and physical protection of the NPP site perimeter, to modernize the polar cranes of the reactor compartments responsible for unloading spent fuel casks, and to set up nuclear fuel handling machines… A special role in lobbying the interests of the russian federation and any indirect options for its participation - through convenient Ukrainian intermediaries - was played by influential politicians and civil servants included in Derkach’s chosen circle.

The second half of 2019 was marked by the Derkachivnya's fierce battles for control of Energoatom, which they managed to control twice in 2007-2008 and 2012-2013. These were lost years that threw us back years, halted the development of the nuclear fuel diversification project with the United States, and delayed the construction of a centralized spent fuel storage facility for more than a decade. Derkachivnya was devastatingly poisoning the energy industry with russian influence and thoroughly purging the best managers and the professional community of engineers who were the guarantors of Ukraine's energy independence and sustainable development.

To do this, they did not care about methods, they acted harshly and boldly. Thus, in order to discredit the leadership of Energoatom, they planned an artificial chain of operational events, the severity of which was supposed to show the inability of the current head of Energoatom to perform the functions of managing the company. In the summer of 2019, during the planned overload of nuclear fuel at Khmelnytskyi NPP Unit 2, one of the auxiliary transformers burned down due to a short circuit. Even its prompt replacement with a backup transformer does not prevent the inevitable, and when the unit generator is out of repair and undergoing electrical tests, the rotor iron and copper of the generator stator melt, again as a result of a short circuit, where one of the fluoroplastic pipes connecting the cooling distillate to the copper rod was blocked by a cloth.

Looking from the present, it is not even surprising that the standard work program and quality system in place did not work. It was some incredible density of typical damages in independent tests of electrically separated equipment, significantly spaced in time, which resulted in more than six months of downtime at KhNPP-2 for the overhaul of the power generator.

In the autumn months of that year, as abundant fly agarics came into being "the children of Lieutenant Schmidt", using this event to convince the new leadership of the country that Energoatom's top managers were incapacitated.? Pushing each other around, the contenders for the company's presidency were devastatingly critical of the current head of Energoatom, were too generous with creative proposals to the yet-to-be-formed legislature and government, offering measures to bring the nuclear industry out of the protracted management crisis and to improve nuclear safety, which they had in mind, apparently thanks to their experience of profiting from the losses of other companies that had been driven to bankruptcy and sale.

New alternatives from non-core managers promised to turn the nuclear industry into a role model, an unlimited source of self-financing, sustainable development, using "tolling schemes for nuclear fuel from russia," diversification of russian nuclear fuel supplies from China, and the creation of pocket concessions for the resale of Ukrainian electricity to “Inter RAO” and “ESN Group” (EuroNorthOil) under the umbrella of the russian foreign and military intelligence services.

These valuable proposals were subject to conditions set by the russian delegation at the negotiations in Vienna, the fulfillment of which was the only condition for preparing decisions for the high-level meeting in Paris. By the end of February 2020, the backbone of the Ukrainian-patriotic management of Ukraine's nuclear industry was finally broken, and the company's management was placed under the control of Derkach's team, and we can see these consequences today, as they have affected everyone with the war.

This is about what those uncompromising changes to "effective managers" were worth, which led to the shameful loss of the ZNPP and the ruinate of its operating personnel. We are witnessing an almost controlled bankruptcy of the company, the result on the screen is a two-pronged operation to increase electricity tariffs, an attempt to financially exhaust the warring country, due to the cost of preparatory work for the smoldering reincarnation of the russian reactor facility V-466, from the Bulgarian NPP “Belena”, on the unfinished ruins of the V-320 reactor of Khmelnytskyi NPP-3,4. And the series almost ends with the victorious removal of the "ineffective" Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, who "not so well and somehow wrongly" defended Ukrenergo's distribution system and lost sources of public and private owners, and the hope for a more powerful leader with whom the "snow leopards" will be able to cooperate.

It seems that even Derkachivnya has reached the point where it has no one to fire but its own employees. However, there is still an option left - to blame everything on the middle management - general directors, chief engineers of nuclear power plants and their deputies, so they will get to the licensed operating personnel and heads of operating units. However, they did not want to destroy the fundamental basis of their importance and went for a simplified procedure - forcing NPP managers to lie and falsify reality. In order to prevent the lies from being checked, they hid the facts under a veil of secrecy during martial law.

They did not have time to pour the open switchgears near the nuclear power plant in solid concrete, did not complete all the preparatory works for the construction of KhNPP-3,4, Kroll has not yet been restored as well, and therefore the time of untouched existence is not over for emigration to Vienna to join other agents of influence who escaped mobilization or know something about the possibility of their detention, like ex-HR Boyarintsev.

Everything is fine with the "snow leopards" and operational issues of Ukrainian NPPs, but the results of an independent investigation into operational events on 23.11.2022, 16.12.2022 at South Ukraine NPP-3, on 10.02.2023 at Khmelnytskyi NPP-2, on 26.08.2024 at South Ukraine NPP-3,2 and Rivne NPP, show that we gained experience of new phenomena that did not manifest themselves before the war, and then changed our understanding of the dynamics of transients and limits of the design basis, enriching us with new databases on reliability, failures and limits of NPP functionality.

The gained experience has shown that today it is necessary to take into account in probabilistic safety analyses of nuclear facilities with military risks, which should be considered not separately, but as a set of interacting operational states of power units at one NPP site. The war has shown that the current operational state of Ukrenergo's electricity distribution system, operating energy sources and NPPs balancing according to a given protocol during missile attacks, the effectiveness of passive measures and the capabilities of active means of protecting energy distribution and transmission facilities are also a new task for analysis and creation of an interactive risk management and decision-making tool. This is our future tool for building distributed and internally protected power generation, which, along with a furious enemy, needs additional means of active protection and redundancy.

It seems that the time is approaching when almost all options for survival and mimicry of russian larvae in the Ukrainian nuclear industry have been exhausted. Even the President's warnings at the UN about potential threats to open switchgears near nuclear power plants will not help, because we were late with the second level of protection against UAVs. The only thing that will work out well in Derkachivnia this time is a PR campaign - "For the first time in the history of the world" and our friendly expert opinion - "We’ve had this already." It is also possible to make money and pay off on this, and the grounds are better than others: special prices can be easily justified if they are modifications for nuclear power plants, for which the head of the Regulator is a guarantor, and can put his reputation as a capital builder on the line.

For the professional community of independent experts, the effectiveness of Ukrenergo's measures to passively protect distribution systems from UAVs is quite obvious, so similar measures for NPPs' open switchgears are extremely necessary and effective, as well as the creation of appropriate reserves of power transformers, autotransformers, and mobile substations up to 150 kV. It is also clear that at the current state of the war, the orcs are not ready to attack the NPPs' open switchgears. They will do it without hesitation and without any restrictions - at another time and under other circumstances, when the use of nuclear weapons will equalize conventional threats and only if russia is winning this war", as Mariana Budjeryn writes in her latest post (https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/why-russia-is-more-likely-to-go-nuclear-in-ukraine-if-its-winning/)

At the moment, it makes no sense for them to attack NPPs' switchgears, because transient processes with balancing NPPs at capacity during attacks on Ukrenergo's distribution system and crossings with Europe are a more difficult story, fraught with failures that have an infinite variety of risks, more severe than external blackouts, and there are plenty of examples of this. In addition, the Geneva Convention on the Rules of Warfare has not yet been applied, and the consequences could be catastrophic for Rosatom, and would also put an end to Mr. Grossi's ambitions to demonstrate his neutrality to appease russia.

The biggest threat from striking the open switchgears near NPPs is an emergency shutdown and the subsequent set-up of the appropriate logistics for the supply of diesel fuel up to the 10th day after the complete blackout, and by that time the de-energized NPP will have a second-level emergency power supply guaranteed by safety conditions - diesel generators of three independent channels of the NPP safety systems. In addition, Ukrainian NPPs have the third and fourth levels of emergency power supply, which allow avoiding severe scenarios with damage to nuclear fuel. These are all well-known post-Fukushima safety measures and the latest 2.3 MW mobile diesel generators, which the US Government provided us with as assistance in the first year of the war.

It is clear that the topic of passive protection of NPP switchgears is a win-win: UAV will not hit as switchgears are protected, but if it does, it does not affect the outcome of the emergency shutdown, except for the ability to quickly restore power to the grid, and this is almost the only argument in favor of passive protection compared to active protection.? However, the story of attacks on the switchgears near NPPs is an extremely unfavorable story for russia. Why violate the requirements of Article 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Rules of Warfare, which prohibits military strikes against NPPs and their switchgears? russia will continue to hit Ukrenergo's distribution systems and traditional sources, for which it has almost zero responsibility.

Are compromises possible here? Yes, but they are all fatal. For example, let those who have been in charge of everything protect Ukrenergo's switchgears from the position of vice prime minister. It is so difficult to do, given the internal conviction that protection of NPP switchgears from UAV attacks is not needed, because of the expectation of agreements with the russians and the proposal for the permanent presence of the IAEA mission at NPP switchgears.

It seems that they have agreed, and on 26.08.2024 it hit severely. Now the President of the country speaks from the UN rostrum about the threats to NPP switchgears. So, last Thursday, they rushed to the sites with inspections to confirm that the switchgears are vulnerable, and even at the Verkhovna Rada Committee meeting on the approval of the law on the construction of KhNPPs No. 3 and No. 4 – nobody showed up. To protect RNPP switchgears ?from UAVs, they have already announced a purchase of 500 million hryvnias, and only in March 2025 will they be able to complete the protection.? Where such a confidence come from that the russians will be striking with UAVs and after the construction is completed? By the way, this is also a compromise version of the agreement. The distribution and protection system of Ukrenergo will definitely be targeted by UAVs, which is probably why Kudrytskyi was fired...

Those who have not managed to built KhNPP-3 and KhNPP-4 using russian calking of russian equipment from Bulgaria and through China - in coordination with Westinghouse, should switch to everything that indicates an unstoppable movement towards an unlimited increase in nuclear energy.

It is the unbalanced ambition of the nuclear industry leaders that the Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the 8th convocation, Victoria Voitsitska, and Volodymyr Omelchenko, Director of Energy Programs at the Razumkov Center pointed out in the Financial Times webpage (https://www.ft.com/content/69b56215-c373-45a6-b52e-c1ab403565d5?sharetype=blocked). However, the best is the response of the dancers, who are always hampered by someone else's past to freely flood the bleeding country with nuclear megawatts -https://t.me/insiderUKR/84057

Let's scare the pike with the river and let the design offices build at least something - in accordance with the current regulatory requirements - KhNPP-5, 6, Chyhyryn, Dolyn, Ochakiv, Kharkiv, Chornobyl and complete the existing ones. This is also a compromise between the future and the needs of the present, but one that depletes the reeking with blood country, draining the already limited resources to protect the existing distribution and transmission systems, distributed generation plans, and most importantly, survival in a war with the victory over the enemy on the battlefield and a just peace.

As for those who surrendered the Zaporizhzhya plant, let them make amends and negotiate with the Turks, Iranians, or Saudis to be wedding generals along with the IAEA to cover up the russian presence of Rosatom. This is also the art of compromise - to negotiate and become messiahs with private rights to the destroyed ZNPP.

However, the industry leaders have forgotten that today it is necessary to develop a symptom-oriented plan for returning the ZNPP in the conditions of ongoing hostilities and in cooperation with the military and specialists and other state institutions, and to radically revise the scenarios of severe accidents.

This includes consideration of alternatives to mobile power supply and new solutions in developing emergency procedures for removing ultra-low decay heat from the primary coolant through the use of ordinary air and the capabilities of repair ventilation systems. It has been more than 15 months since these analyses were performed by ANL with the support of DOE USA.

We are not in a position to predict under what conditions, in what condition and at what time of the year we will be returning the ZNPP to Ukrainian control. However, 20 months ago, we carried out analyses on heat supply to the city of Enerhodar and ZNPP's own steam needs for the winter period, also with the support of the United States. The analyses and justifications performed indicate better conditions and safer operating states, under which we are able to obtain twice the thermal power of using thermal energy for the needs of heat and hot water. All of this requires careful analysis and application in conditions that may be limited and unpredictably unfavorable for operation in the "Hot Shutdown" or "At Power" operating states.

We know almost nothing about the operational condition in which the russians will leave us the power units. It is possible that by the new year they may restore the decay heat output of one or two power units to the level of those in September and October 2022 at power units 5 and 6. This is an increase of almost 20 times compared to the current level of decay heat output, which has already been officially reported to the IAEA in a verbal note from russia in May 2024 as a power start-up of the Unit 1 reactor for its fortieth anniversary. Therefore, Energoatom's task is not only to resist any attempt by the russians to switch the power supply of the entire ZNPP to its own needs or individual power units to power from the russian grid, but also to find proactive opportunities to prevent the reactor from reaching critical condition and power.

Putting power units into the "hot shutdown" state is also a dangerous story, because there is an uncontrolled chemical destruction of the metal of the tubes of the heat exchange surface of steam generators under conditions not provided for by the technological regulations for maintaining the water-chemical parameters of the secondary circuit feedwater, which we have nothing to replace with. I'm not at all sure that the russians will leave us with intact reserve steam generators that are preserved for future use.

A hot shutdown of the power unit at ultra-low core power output means the risk of deep emergency supercooling of the primary coolant, which is possible in case of explosions of mined steam lines in the A820 premises and direct military hits, which russia will use after the entry of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and special divisions of the Ministry of Defense to the territory of ZNPP.

Nothing special will happen, the picture will be valid even from a distance of ten kilometers, but the external perception will exceed the impression from Fukushima. The good news is that it will be non-radioactive secondary coolant steam. The bad news is that the energy released will be equivalent to 42 tons of TNT, capable of causing significant damage to the areas around the reactor confinement.

The bad news is that if a rupture occurs in a non-insulated part of one of the steam lines, the temperature of the reactor vessel metal will drop from 275°C to a minimum of 110°C in almost 200 seconds, and this will be a thermal shock mode of the reactor vessel metal, which is beyond the ability of russian operators, who have no idea how to restore the critical safety function "Integrity".

Therefore, Energoatom must develop an action plan that will take into account such scenarios that, even remotely and in the context of hostilities, can affect processes that are extremely complex under normal conditions, but we must not lose either the reactor vessel or the ability to mitigate the accident consequences as much as possible.

We need to take action to neutralize the enclave that both the russian military and Rosatom are counting on, trying to absolve themselves of responsibility and fill the ZNPP with only those contractors from russia who will be listed only as ZNPP employees.

We need a plan to secure the IAEA mission members who will become hostages of the russians when the russians leave the ZNPP, so that there is time to retreat to a safe distance from the Ukrainian armed forces.

It is imperative to preserve the Ukrainian staff of the ZNPP, who, due to circumstances and the inhumane treatment of them by Energoatom, remained in the occupied territory, because they are the first to be eliminated by the russians when they leave as witnesses and accused of a crime by the Ukrainian armed forces.

We need a digital image of the entire ZNPP site and the premises of all ZNPP power units, as well as the adjacent territory within a three-kilometer zone, so that the military can freely act and operate with risks in cooperation with a team of specialists that will gradually enter the territory of Enerhodar, the industrial zone, the spent fuel dry storage facility, ZNPP switchgears and ZNPP, and most importantly, the territory of the ZNPP industrial site to check and neutralize step by step possible risks, which a nuclear terrorist will leave us as a legacy.

This includes the development of a strategy to maximize the safety of people in order to gain Ukrainian control over the ZNPP with minimal losses and maximum uncertainty of the enemy's actions.

This is the main thing and priority, to keep the remaining operational and maintenance personnel of ZNPP instead of replacing with plasterers and painters, which they are trying to make as licensed staff.

I may speak about the last two components of the risks in case of ZNPP liberation. It is about partial or complete blocking of natural air circulation through dry spent fuel storage containers, which Energoatom should take into account in the emergency response. Therefore, it is necessary to develop symptom-oriented procedures for restoring natural air circulation or unblocking ventilation openings. Appropriate vehicles should be provided to restore the vertical position and video access and neutralize anything that could explode or remotely block the free flow of cooling air.

Another problem is the loss of the automatic radiation monitoring system (ARMS) in the thirty-kilometer zone around ZNPP - forever. We should not rely on the possibility of restoring and using the system, and therefore, we need to clone the entire lost fleet today to have reliable radiation monitoring equipment after the ZNPP is liberated, because after ZNPP is liberated, the russians will try to prove to the world that safety was better in their presence.

However, the source of the radioactive impact is not only ZNPP, but also the ash dumps next to ZTPP, which the russians have repeatedly set on fire with shelling and organized races around them in military trucks. This caused dust and spread the ash onto fertile land, residents of neighboring communities, the ZNPP, and the people.

This is a bad story about the transfer of alpha-active substances inhaled with air into the lungs, with food and water into the esophagus, and deposited in the bone tissue of humans and animals.

All these risks also need to be foreseen, and this is a super-task for Energoatom's leaders, because there will be no ideal conditions, and it is necessary to conduct constant stress tests and readiness and adaptation to constant changes.

+The construction of new power units to replace ZNPP is a story of an army crossing to the opposite bank, but with boats left undamaged. The battle had not even begun, everyone turned around and fled by boats to the opposite bank, where there is an opportunity to build new power units, dream about SMRs (small modular reactors) and experience diversification and fabrication of nuclear fuel at the yet-to-be-built plant in the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk.

Why come up with distractions from the main goal of survival and return of the Zaporizhzhya plant for the work of its licensed personnel, who are distracted by maintaining licenses not of the ZNPP, but at best by licenses of other NPPs in Ukraine.

Maybe two years is enough time to realize that the russians will not leave us any survived training simulators, so we need to spend money on three new ones, and by 2025, we need to have a site and premises with operating simulators and programs to maintain qualifications for new operating conditions and states of power units return that require different competencies from licensed personnel.

And the most painful thing is the compromise of Ukraine's shame, when Rosatom and the russian military can get away clean, because they provided technical support to ZNPP and its physical protection in accordance with the existing international agreements with Energoatom and the Regulator, which were valid on the Ukrainian side for almost six months after the occupation of the ZNPP.

So far, the price of compromises has not equaled the risk rates, and if the state authorities come up with conclusions, then, as our first President wisely said, "… a chance is priceless, if not used, there will be a price..."

?Georgiy Balakan

To be continued…