JUDY WOODRUFF: Ukraine gets much of its electricity from nuclear power.
And a series of Russian attacks near nuclear plants over the last two weeks
are elevating fears of potential accidents and what they could trigger.
John Yang has the latest.
JOHN YANG: Judy, the latest warnings come from Ukrainian authorities,
who say Russian attacks have left Chernobyl disconnected the power grid.
Chernobyl, as many know, is the site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986.
And while it's no longer generating electricity, it still stores spent nuclear fuel, which must be
cooled. There are emergency generators providing power to do that, but they run on diesel fuel
and only had a 48-hour supply. And, last week, a training area near another nuclear
plant in Ukraine, the largest one in Europe, briefly caught fire during a Russian assault.
Science correspondent Miles O'Brien,
who covered the aftermath of Chernobyl and other nuclear accidents, joins us now.
Miles, the name Chernobyl, of course, haunts any discussion of nuclear power.
What's the real threat of what's happening there now?
MILES O'BRIEN: John, I think we have to put it in perspective.
The nuclear fuel we're talking about there is old and cold. The last operative reactor
at Chernobyl closed down in 2000. Yes, there are 20,000 spent fuel rods in a pool
there slowly cooling down, but each of them has about the equivalent of 35 watts,
or a night-light, to them. And so, if you left them in that pool of water for a week,
it might -- without doing anything to it, it might get to the temperature of a warm bath.
Now, as for the actual melted-down portion of Chernobyl, where the real trouble occurred 36
years ago, there's no power or water required to keep it safe. It's inside a shelter.
JOHN YANG: But there are operations still going on, decommissioning operations.
What are the options of restoring power to Chernobyl? And why would the Russians want to
be in that area, which is uninhabitable because of contamination from radioactive materials?
MILES O'BRIEN: It's a good question.
There are a couple of other connections to the grid which could be reactivated, one inside
Ukraine, one which comes from Belarus, which was turned off right before the invasion. So,
you could get the power on there fairly quickly, in theory, and there are a few
hundred people who work there. And, on a good day, it's a dark and dank place to work.
Strategically, it makes good sense for the Russians to be there.
It's north of Kyiv, straight shot into the capital,
and there is a sophisticated electrical switching station there which they may want to control.
JOHN YANG: Miles, you have been to that area. What's it like?
MILES O'BRIEN: Well, it's 1,000 square miles of mostly nothing,
and then this plant, this surreal abandoned plant in the middle of it.
Some old people have held on and are still living there. I remember talking to an elderly
woman living in her house, asking her why she didn't move. She said she was more worried about
the roof falling on her head than the possibility of radiation exposure.
What has happened, interestingly, is, it's become, some would suggest, sort of an ironic
Garden of Eden, a lot of wildlife there. But a lot of scientists would tell you
there's been all kinds of genetic mutations making the wildfire there not so healthy.
JOHN YANG: Ukraine does rely heavily on nuclear power for its electricity.
A number of nuclear power plants across the country.
What is the danger or how dangerous is it to have a battlefield like this?
MILES O'BRIEN: Yes, this is where you get into the nightmare scenario.
There are 15 operative reactors there. And if you cut off power to one of them,
you could march down the road to a Fukushima scenario. You need water flowing over the hot core
of these operating plants in order to keep them from melting down. Since Fukushima,
plants all over the world have bolstered their defense in depth to try to insure against this.
But we're not exactly certain how well-defended these plants are.
John, this is unprecedented. We cannot think of another time
in history when nuclear power plants have been caught in the crossfire of war.
JOHN YANG: Earlier in the program, we heard the Ukrainian ambassador to the
United States tell Judy that monitors have been disabled at Chernobyl and some other plants.
What are the dangers? What's the threat of that?
MILES O'BRIEN: Well, it's always good to have visibility of what's going on at Chernobyl,
in case things don't become stable. Right now, it is relatively stable.
But the sensors that are there from the International Atomic Energy Agency
are -- many of them are remote. They're solar-operated.
And the data comes back on cellular networks. And, of course, if the power grid is down,
there's no cellular transmission. So, right now, we're a little bit blind about Chernobyl.
And that's kind of a scary thing to say on the face of it. But the experts tell me,
because it hasn't been operating for 22 years, we need to temper our concern.
JOHN YANG: Science correspondent Miles O'Brien, thank you very much.
MILES O'BRIEN: You're welcome, John.