OREANDA-NEWS. March 17, 2011. The ROSATOM Headquarters in Moscow hosted a media briefing on the situation at Fukushima I NPP (Japan). The briefing was chaired by Yaroslav Shtrombakh, a representative of the ROSATOM’s Situation Center, First Deputy Director of the national Research Center Kurchatov Institute.

“Event won’t develop to a catastrophic scenario at the nuclear power plant in Japan, but the situation is grave,” Shtrombakh told journalists.

Elaborating on potential, most unfavorable course of events at Fukushima I affected by the disaster, he noted that it could be meltdown of five reactor cores of the plant.

“A worst case scenario is a meltdown of five reactor cores and it’s unlikely to be avoided,” Shtrombakh said.

“The sixth core is out and in the hold-up pool, but it wouldn’t escape its fate. We considered a situation of what would happen to fuel in the hold-up pool, and so far we are confident that there cannot be an inadvertent chain reaction,” Shtrombakh said, noting that at the same time, even an inadvertent chain reaction was “not so fearsome if occurs locally.”

In the worst case “we can observe dispersion of fuel inside the building,” according to Shtrombakh. “But I think it’s unlikely. We don’t see any catastrophic scenario associated with fuel dispersion over the territory of Japan and surrounding countries,” he said.

He also touched upon safety of reactors in the NRC Kurchatov Institute. “The institute’s reactors are absolutely safe, and yet it’s ridiculous to speak about danger of F-1 reactor,” he told journalists.

After the March 11 earthquake, Japanese Fukushima I and Fukushima II declared emergency due to failure of the cooling systems. On Saturday, Monday and Tuesday first, third and second units, correspondingly, sustained explosions; later, fourth unit was caught by fire.

On March 12 the Situation Center has been set at ROSATOM to provide for continuous monitoring of the situation at the affected plants in Japan. The center is headed by Alexander Lokshin, Deputy Director General of ROSATOM. The center members are other ROSATOM officials, as well as representatives from Rosenergoatom Concern OJSC, IBRAE RAS, SEC Diaprom, VNIIES OJSC, NRC Kurchatov Institute and Atomtekhenergo OJSC.