Training on Crisis Communication Held in SSTC NRS
On 19-21 November 2024, a series of webinars “Nuclear and Radiation Safety in Wartime” was held for journalists and opinion leaders in the State Scientific and Technical Center for Nuclear and Radiation Safety (SSTC NRS). The event is the final stage of the COMMUNICATION Project that is implemented in cooperation with the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (DSA) and the SNRIU. The Project is aimed at developing a unified approach to the process of crisis communication and prevention of risks that may occur during performing professional duties related to nuclear and radiation threats.
The objective of the final stage was to improve the knowledge of journalists and opinion leaders of nuclear and radiation safety, clarify radiological risks during the war and hostilities. In general, over three days, the lecturers spoke about important aspects of writing messages in case of the occurrence of a nuclear or radiation threat and other relevant issues of the nuclear industry.
More than 60 representatives of the mass media, researchers, students (future nuclear engineers) and other interested people participated in the webinars.
On the first day, Zakhar Ivanov, Junior Researcher of the SSTC NRS Emergency Preparedness and Radiation Monitoring Department, spoke about the main radiation threats during the full-scale invasion, personal protective equipment and actions during an accident at a nuclear power plant, rules for management of radiation sources, iodine prophylaxis and about how radiation affects our everyday life.
On the second day, Oleksii Dybach, Director of the SSTC NRS INTENSA Center, explained the stages of NPP construction, legislative and regulatory framework of Ukraine, current context of nuclear industry development, small modular reactors and the decarbonization of energy.
Dmytro Gumenyuk, Head of the SSTC NRS Safety Analysis Unit, presented the lecture about the principles of NPP operation, internal and external impacts on NPP, emergency events and communication cases of the most known NPP accidents on the final third day of a series of webinars.
Besides, the Leading Engineer of Zaporizhzhia NPP who worked on the occupied NPP in Enerhodar when the power units were still in operation was another speaker to join the webinar. In 2023, he managed to get to Ukraine. The expert told the webinar participants about his experience of working at the NPP and the difficulties he faced during the occupation:
“The occupiers have turned ZNPP into a military base. They have shelled Nikopol and adjacent territories from the territory of the nuclear power plant. There are numerous provocations with shelling of Enerhodar that is the NPP satellite city to intimidate Ukraine. However, ZNPP today is powered from the Ukrainian energy grid, its power units are in cold shutdown, there is no talk of connecting to the russian grid and commissioning of the units. There are still employees of ZNPP in Enerhodar who have not signed the contracts with the occupation authorities and who are waiting for Ukraine to come back.
The expert from ZNPP addressed media representatives to trust only official sources of information, as the information space is full of various messages that need to be filtered .
The operation of the Ukrainian energy grid, the causes of blackouts, threats to ZNPP posed by the occupiers, prospects of construction of small modular reactors and nuclear power units, issues that are faced during the full-scale invasion were the issues generally presented to media representatives during these three days of webinars to understand the overall picture of the current situation.
According to SSTC NRS