Mikhail Gashev, the first deputy chairman of the Ukrainian State Inspection of Nuclear Regulations, said last week that he signed three fundamental documents regarding supplies of upgraded nuclear fuel TBC-WR from US company Westinghouse.
According to Gashev “the fuel will be delivered to the South-Ukrainian NPP in December and uploaded into the third power unit of the plant in late December or early January.”
Sergei Kondratyev, a senior expert with the Russian Institute for Energy and Finance, voiced concern last week over the sharp switch from Russian-to US-produced nuclear fuel as it could pose a threat to the safety of Ukrainian nuclear power plants, which were built in the Soviet Union era.
In an interview with ITAR-TASS Kondratyev said that Ukraine’s decision to switch to the US-produced upgraded nuclear fuel did not take into account technical characteristics and peculiarities of the Soviet-built NPPs.
In another story further down, it is reported that remote cameras are showing still-molten corium (the fused remains of the reactor core) flowing out of the ruined reactor into the ground. If a sufficient mass collects together in one spot, spontaneous fission is possible. Worse, when the corium hits the ground water, radioactive geysers will result, blasting radioactivity into the atmosphere.
I still would like to know if STUXNET was in those Siemens controllers on the safety systems that failed to operate correctly during the disaster.