Nuclear security

Rising Accident Rate in Ukraine's Nuclear Sector Worries Ex-Chernobyl Director

At a press conference in Kiev last week, Umanets, the former head of Ukraine's nuclear power authority who took charge of the ill-fated Chernobyl plant in the late 1980s after the 1986 disaster, warned that the possibility of a an accident taking place at one of Ukraine's four remaining nuclear power plants is growing.

Umanets pointed out that fifteen violations had been recorded in the plants in 2015 according to the International Nuclear Event Scale, which documents everything from minor incidents to major accidents. That is 1.5 times more than the number of accidents recorded in 2014. In 2016, he added, the INES has already recorded seven violations, double the amount reported during the same period in 2015.