Article by Azerbaijani political scientist Fikrat Sadikhov.
Not only specialists are aware of a serious threat posed by the Metsamor nuclear power plant in Armenia.
Armenia accounts for the only nuclear power plant in the region, locating near Metsamor city, some 20-30km south of Yerevan. It was launched in 1976 while now only the second unit of the Armenian nuclear power with a capacity of 407.5 MW is functioning.
Armenian side has long been trying to persuade the world community that this nuclear plant is almost the safest in the world but in vain.
Is it true? The National Geographic has lately published an article entitled “Is Armenia’s Nuclear Plant the World’s Most Dangerous?” about the activity of the station and its security issue. The first phrase in the article wipes off the farfetched arguments of the Armenian side making them completely senseless.
The article says “fateful combination of design and location make Metsamor among the most dangerous nuclear plants in the world”.
According to the magazine, the Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant which is just 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the Turkish border in a seismically active area, attracts an even increased attention in the wake of Japan's quake-and-tsunami-triggered Fukushima Daiichi crisis. Armenian officials say modifications made to the reactor over the past 15 years have made it safer.
However, IAEA said necessary upgrades do not comply with general standards and were done after its restart.
Additionally, the ‘VVER 440s installed at the plant share one characteristic with Chernobyl that has been a continuing concern to many who live nearby: They have no containment structure’, the magazine says.
It continues that ‘instead, VVER 440s rely on an "accident localization system," designed to handle small ruptures. In the event of a large rupture, the system would vent directly to the atmosphere’. They refer to an article in NEI's 1997 Source Book on Soviet nuclear plants saying ‘they cannot cope with large primary circuit breaks’. "As with most Soviet-designed plants, electricity production by the VVER-440 Model V230s came at the expense of safety”, the magazine says.
The opinion of Antonia Wenisch of the Austrian Institute of Applied Ecology in Vienna, who calls Metsamor "among the most dangerous nuclear plants still in operation”, also sounds important.
She said ‘despite the upgrades to the plant the overall safety has not improved sufficiently’.
It is also known that since it failed to persuade Armenia to close the plant, the EU has focused on providing aid for improving the plant safety, spending more than 59 million euros ($85 million) on such projects as well as for renewable energy, and regional energy cooperation efforts. However, it offers 200 million euro ($289 million) loan to finance Metsamor's shutdown, but the issue of its closing has not yet been settled and the Armenian side with its peculiar ‘obstinacy’ still pretends not to be seeing what happens.
It all raises fears in Turkey.
“Armenian nuke plant is the most outdated in the world and most organizations including IAEA are demanding its shutdown since it represents a serious threat for Turkey”, Turkey’s Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said.
“The station is located 16 km from the Turkish border and applies old technology which might turn it into an epicenter of a serious disaster”, he added saying Turkey continues campaign for its shutdown.
The location of the plant is the biggest shortcoming in terms of security. Being located in the highlands, in case of failure, it may face shortage of water necessary for cooling the active zone of the reactor. Another important thing is that two serious crashes occurred at the nuke plant throughout its operation. About 400 km of cable burned down during one of them.
The task to attain the plant’s shutdown has already become among priorities for Azerbaijan, as well.
Thus, the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan and its Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources draw up materials that prove the danger posed by the Metsamor nuclear plant. These materials are to be submitted in international organizations. Intensive talks on this issue are also held in IAEA.
Now that the events in Japan showed that no country, either highly technological or progressive, is secured from such man-caused disasters, what can we say about Armenia which is on the verge of economic bankruptcy and cannot even implement primary social programs and is located in a highly seismic area? Can a country in such a state ensure the safety of a nuclear plant, especially that Armenia undertook to close it when it was joining the Council of Europe?
The Metsamor power plant is morally and technically outdated and is on the list of most dangerous ones by the IAEA ranking list. It represents a real threat for humanity and nations, residing in the South Caucasus and neighboring regions. This issue must be actively raised to the Russian side, since the disaster on the nuclear plant would have an imminent effect on the population of Russia’s south. This issue can be raised at the sessions of the UN General Assembly, European and other international structures, primarily, IAEA, through joint efforts of Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia and other countries. It is necessary to show the world community that the risk of disaster at the Metsamor nuke plant is high enough especially now when the future of the overall nuclear power engineering is at issue.
But if the Armenian side is going to use this factor as a trading object and for different speculations, it must be prevented from doing so.
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