A worker is killed in an attack near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, as the war in Ukraine grinds on. Fletcher and Octavio dig into the science of nuclear energy, the history of catastrophic failures, and what it means to have active reactors in the middle of a war.
Un trabajador muere en un ataque cerca de la central nuclear de Zaporiyia, la planta más grande de Europa, mientras el conflicto en Ucrania continúa. Fletcher y Octavio exploran la ciencia de la energía nuclear, la historia de los grandes desastres, y qué significa tener reactores en medio de una guerra.
7 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| reactor | reactor | El reactor necesita agua fría para funcionar de manera segura. |
| radiactivo | radioactive | El combustible gastado sigue siendo radiactivo durante muchos años. |
| evacuación | evacuation | La evacuación de la ciudad comenzó muy tarde después del accidente. |
| central nuclear | nuclear power plant | La central nuclear produce mucha electricidad para el país. |
| contaminación | contamination / pollution | La contaminación radiactiva llegó a países muy lejanos después del accidente. |
| seguir + gerundio | to keep doing / to continue doing | Los trabajadores siguen manteniendo la planta a pesar del peligro. |
| peligroso | dangerous | Es muy peligroso tener soldados dentro de una central nuclear activa. |
The thing about nuclear power plants is that they were designed for a world where some rules still applied.
And then you put one in the middle of a war.
Sí, y esta semana un trabajador murió en la central nuclear de Zaporiyia, en Ucrania.
Yes, and this week a worker was killed at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
Rusia dice que fue un ataque ucraniano.
Russia says it was a Ukrainian attack.
Ucrania no confirmó nada.
Ukraine confirmed nothing.
One person dead, and the headline is almost quiet about it.
But Zaporizhzhia isn't a quiet story.
This is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe.
Six reactors.
And it's been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022.
Cuatro años, Fletcher.
Four years, Fletcher.
Cuatro años con soldados dentro de una central nuclear activa.
Four years with soldiers inside an active nuclear power plant.
Es una situación completamente nueva en la historia.
It's a completely new situation in history.
Completely new, right.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has had inspectors there, but only a handful, and their access has been restricted.
They're essentially guests of the Russian military.
Y el problema no es solo la violencia.
And the problem isn't just the violence.
El problema es la electricidad.
The problem is electricity.
Una central nuclear necesita energía externa para enfriar los reactores cuando están apagados.
A nuclear plant needs external power to cool the reactors even when they're shut down.
Si la electricidad falla, hay un peligro muy serio.
If the power fails, there's a very serious danger.
Let's actually slow down and explain that, because I think a lot of people don't realize it.
Even when you turn off a nuclear reactor, it keeps generating heat for days, sometimes weeks.
You have to keep pumping coolant through it or you get a meltdown.
Exacto.
Exactly.
El calor viene de los materiales radiactivos dentro del reactor.
The heat comes from the radioactive materials inside the reactor.
No puedes simplemente apagarlo como una cocina.
You can't just switch it off like a stove.
El proceso continúa solo durante mucho tiempo.
The process keeps going on its own for a long time.
That's the mechanism behind Fukushima in 2011.
The earthquake and tsunami didn't destroy the reactor cores directly.
What happened was the backup generators that ran the cooling systems were flooded.
No coolant, heat builds, and eventually you lose containment.
Y en Zaporiyia, la conexión a la red eléctrica se cortó varias veces durante la guerra.
And at Zaporizhzhia, the connection to the power grid was cut several times during the war.
Tuvieron que usar generadores de emergencia.
They had to use emergency generators.
Esto pasó cinco veces entre 2022 y 2024.
This happened five times between 2022 and 2024.
Five times.
Each one of those moments was a near miss that most of the world barely noticed.
The IAEA director general called it, I remember reading this, 'playing with fire.'
Mira, para entender bien este peligro, hay que hablar de Chernóbil.
Look, to really understand this danger, we need to talk about Chernobyl.
Porque Chernóbil no es solo historia.
Because Chernobyl isn't just history.
Está en el mismo país, a menos de 500 kilómetros de Zaporiyia.
It's in the same country, less than 500 kilometers from Zaporizhzhia.
I've been to Chernobyl.
Went there for a piece in 2007.
The exclusion zone is still massive.
Thirty kilometers in every direction.
Forests that look normal from a distance but the dosimeter in your pocket is clicking the whole time.
El accidente de Chernóbil en 1986 fue diferente al de Fukushima.
The Chernobyl accident in 1986 was different from Fukushima.
En Chernóbil, el reactor explotó durante una prueba de seguridad.
At Chernobyl, the reactor exploded during a safety test.
El diseño del reactor era inestable.
The reactor design was unstable.
Era un error de construcción, no solo un desastre natural.
It was a construction flaw, not just a natural disaster.
The RBMK reactor design.
They knew it had a positive void coefficient, which in plain language means: the hotter it gets, the more reactive it becomes.
So a runaway reaction just keeps accelerating.
That design was never used in the West.
Los reactores de Zaporiyia son diferentes, son reactores de agua presurizada.
The Zaporizhzhia reactors are different, they're pressurized water reactors.
Son más seguros en ese sentido.
They're safer in that regard.
Pero 'más seguro' no significa 'sin peligro' cuando hay una guerra a tu alrededor.
But 'safer' doesn't mean 'no danger' when there's a war around you.
And here's the piece of this that doesn't get enough attention: it's not even about a direct strike on the reactor.
You hit the right substation, the right pumping station, the right cooling pond, and you've created a catastrophe without ever touching the reactor vessel itself.
Y las piscinas de combustible gastado son un problema enorme.
And the spent fuel pools are a massive problem.
El combustible viejo, que ya no se usa en el reactor, todavía es muy radiactivo.
The old fuel, no longer used in the reactor, is still highly radioactive.
Necesita agua fría durante años.
It needs cold water for years.
Si el agua se calienta demasiado, es un desastre.
If the water gets too hot, it's a disaster.
Zaporiyia has been storing spent fuel on site for decades.
There's an enormous amount of it.
A breach of those storage pools wouldn't produce an explosion like Chernobyl, but the contamination could spread across a huge swath of southern Ukraine and into Europe.
Cuando dices 'llegar a Europa', ¿qué tan lejos hablamos?
When you say 'reach Europe', how far are we talking?
Porque mucha gente no sabe cómo viaja la contaminación radiactiva.
Because a lot of people don't know how radioactive contamination travels.
The wind does most of the work.
After Chernobyl, radioactive particles were detected in Sweden within days.
Sweden, which is more than a thousand miles away.
They actually discovered the disaster partly because Swedish workers at a nuclear plant were triggering radiation detectors when they arrived for their shifts, contaminated from the outside.
Eso es increíble.
That's incredible.
Los soviéticos intentaron esconder el accidente, pero la radiación no conoce fronteras.
The Soviets tried to hide the accident, but radiation doesn't know borders.
Los suecos descubrieron lo que pasó antes de que Moscú lo admitiera.
The Swedes found out what happened before Moscow admitted it.
And that secrecy cost lives.
The evacuation of Pripyat, the city next to the reactor, was delayed by more than 36 hours.
About 50,000 people living less than three kilometers from an open nuclear fire, and they weren't told to leave immediately.
Y con Zaporiyia hoy, la situación política es igual de complicada.
And with Zaporizhzhia today, the political situation is just as complicated.
Rusia controla la planta.
Russia controls the plant.
Si hay un accidente, ¿quién avisa a la gente?
If there's an accident, who warns the people?
¿Quién decide cuándo evacuar?
Who decides when to evacuate?
That's the governance nightmare nobody has a clean answer to.
The IAEA has pushed for a protection zone around the plant.
Russia has never fully accepted it.
Ukraine obviously has no operational authority there.
Hay algo importante que la gente no entiende bien sobre la energía nuclear en Europa.
There's something important people don't understand well about nuclear energy in Europe.
Antes de la guerra, Ucrania producía casi la mitad de su electricidad con energía nuclear.
Before the war, Ukraine produced almost half its electricity from nuclear power.
Era una de las naciones más nucleares del mundo.
It was one of the most nuclear-dependent nations in the world.
Which is a legacy of the Soviet era.
The USSR built reactors across its republics partly as symbols of technological prowess, partly as genuine industrial infrastructure.
Ukraine inherited this network after 1991 and kept it running.
Y hay una ironía histórica aquí.
And there's a historical irony here.
Chernóbil destruyó la confianza en la energía nuclear en todo el mundo.
Chernobyl destroyed trust in nuclear energy across the world.
Pero en Ucrania, siguieron usando reactores nucleares porque era necesario, porque era lo que tenían.
But in Ukraine, they kept using nuclear reactors because it was necessary, because it was what they had.
That irony is almost too much.
The country that suffered the worst nuclear disaster in history becomes one of the most nuclear-dependent countries, and then has those same plants turned into military leverage during an invasion.
It reads like something out of a very dark novel.
La pregunta que me hago es: ¿por qué el mundo no habla más de esto?
The question I keep asking myself is: why doesn't the world talk about this more?
Un trabajador muere, el OIEA protesta, y la noticia desaparece al día siguiente.
A worker dies, the IAEA protests, and the news disappears the next day.
I think there's a kind of collective anesthesia around Zaporizhzhia.
The situation has been dangerous for so long that it's stopped feeling like news.
But the physics haven't changed.
The danger is exactly as real as it was the first week Russia took the plant.
Y los trabajadores ucranianos todavía están allí.
And the Ukrainian workers are still there.
Bajo ocupación rusa, con soldados en el edificio, siguen manteniendo la planta.
Under Russian occupation, with soldiers in the building, they keep maintaining the plant.
Siguen haciendo su trabajo porque si no lo hacen, la situación es mucho peor.
They keep doing their jobs because if they don't, the situation gets much worse.
Those workers are in an extraordinary position.
Technically employed by Energoatom, the Ukrainian state nuclear company.
Taking orders from Russian military commanders.
Responsible for a facility whose malfunction could kill people in a dozen countries.
I mean, the psychological weight of that job is almost unimaginable.
Y esto conecta con algo más grande: ¿puede el derecho internacional proteger la infraestructura nuclear?
And this connects to something bigger: can international law actually protect nuclear infrastructure?
Los Convenios de Ginebra hablan de proteger las instalaciones peligrosas en tiempo de guerra.
The Geneva Conventions talk about protecting dangerous installations in wartime.
Pero no hay mecanismo real para aplicar esto.
But there's no real mechanism to enforce it.
The Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions specifically prohibits attacks on nuclear facilities.
But enforcement is essentially nonexistent in an active conflict.
The law exists.
The compliance mechanism doesn't.
Entonces, ¿qué necesita el mundo para evitar esto en el futuro?
So what does the world need to prevent this in the future?
Porque esta situación va a terminar algún día, pero puede haber otra guerra, otra planta nuclear.
Because this situation will end someday, but there could be another war, another nuclear plant.
That's really the question.
Some people argue for demilitarized zones around all nuclear facilities guaranteed by treaty.
Others say the real answer is transitioning away from nuclear power entirely.
And then there's a third camp saying nuclear is actually what we need more of for the climate, so we'd better figure out how to protect these plants.
El debate sobre la energía nuclear y el cambio climático es interesante.
The debate about nuclear energy and climate change is interesting.
En España, el gobierno decidió cerrar todos los reactores nucleares antes de 2035.
In Spain, the government decided to close all nuclear reactors before 2035.
Pero con la crisis energética, algunos españoles empiezan a preguntarse si fue la decisión correcta.
But with the energy crisis, some Spaniards are beginning to wonder if that was the right decision.
France went the other direction.
About 70 percent of French electricity comes from nuclear power.
And after Russia cut gas supplies to Europe, France's position started looking rather strategic.
Sí, aunque los reactores franceses también tuvieron muchos problemas técnicos en 2022.
Yes, although the French reactors also had a lot of technical problems in 2022.
Muchos estaban parados por mantenimiento en el peor momento posible.
Many were shut down for maintenance at the worst possible moment.
La energía nuclear es complicada, Fletcher.
Nuclear power is complicated, Fletcher.
No es la solución perfecta.
It's not the perfect solution.
Nothing is.
That's what makes this hard.
Fossil fuels are cooking the planet.
Renewables have intermittency problems.
Nuclear has catastrophic tail risks.
We're choosing between imperfect options at civilizational scale, and meanwhile there's a war being fought around the biggest reactor complex in Europe.
[sigh] It's a lot.
Oye, antes dijiste algo en inglés que me llamó la atención.
Hey, you said something in English earlier that caught my attention.
Dijiste 'they keep doing their work', y en español usé 'siguen haciendo su trabajo'.
You said 'they keep doing their work', and in Spanish I used 'siguen haciendo su trabajo'.
¿Sabes por qué lo decimos así?
Do you know why we say it that way?
I noticed that, actually.
You kept saying 'seguir' with another verb.
'Siguen manteniendo', 'siguen haciendo'.
In English it's 'keep doing' but you're pairing 'seguir' with the gerund, the '-ando' form.
Is that a fixed rule?
Sí, exacto.
Yes, exactly.
'Seguir' más el gerundio significa continuar una acción.
'Seguir' plus the gerund means to continue an action.
'Sigo trabajando' es 'I keep working'.
'Sigo trabajando' is 'I keep working'.
'Seguimos hablando' es 'we keep talking'.
'Seguimos hablando' is 'we keep talking'.
Es muy natural en español y muy útil.
It's very natural in Spanish and very useful.
So 'seguir' does the heavy lifting that 'keep' does in English.
'Keep going', 'seguir yendo'.
'Keep trying', 'seguir intentando'.
That's actually a clean one-to-one mapping, which almost never happens between languages.
Casi, sí.
Almost, yes.
Aunque a veces 'keep' en inglés tiene un sentido diferente, como 'keep quiet', que en español no usamos 'seguir'.
Although sometimes 'keep' in English has a different meaning, like 'keep quiet', where in Spanish we don't use 'seguir'.
Decimos 'quedarse callado'.
We say 'quedarse callado'.
Pero para las acciones continuas, sí, 'seguir' más gerundio es perfecto.
But for continuous actions, yes, 'seguir' plus gerund is perfect.
I'll try to use that this weekend when my son-in-law is talking football for the fourth hour running.
'Sigues hablando de fútbol.' He'll either be impressed or deeply suspicious of my motives.
Si habla de fútbol durante cuatro horas, Fletcher, merece todo lo que le digas.
If he's been talking football for four hours, Fletcher, he deserves everything you say to him.
Hasta la próxima.
Until next time.