Europe’s largest nuclear power plant went up in flames. During the night, Putin’s troops conquered Zaporizhzhia after intense fighting, the nuclear power plant overlooking the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine, which houses six of the country’s fifteen nuclear reactors. The Russians would have targeted the plant with heavy artillery fire and blasts of machine guns that would have caused a huge fire, fortunately in a part of the plant dedicated to training. There would be no casualties or radioactive leaks, local authorities and the IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency agree.
The reaction of the Ukrainian president was very harsh Volodomyr Zelensky: “For the first time in human history a terrorist state has resorted to nuclear terrorism”. Zelensky heard from US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said he wanted to urgently convene the UN Security Council.
Due to the fierce clashes around the reactors, the firefighters would only be able to access the plant after hours. The flames would have been put out at 6.20, reports the Ukrainian State Emergency Service. There would be no casualties or, “at the moment”, radioactive leaks, reports the IAEA, which said it was “deeply concerned” by the battle of Zaporizhzhia.
Gustav Gressel: “If Finland stopped Stalin, Kiev can do it with Putin”
by Enrico Franceschini
The Russian artillery did not cause damage in crucial parts of the plant: according to reports from the Ukrainian Nuclear Safety Authority, “the equipment of the plant and the energy blocks have preserved their integrity”. And “the systems and elements relevant to the safety of the nuclear power plant are operational”
In recent days, images of Ukrainians defending Europe’s largest nuclear power plant from Putin’s battalions had gone around the world. In Zaporizhzhia, hundreds of civilians had formed human chains by blocking the access road with garbage trucks and sandbags. But on Wednesday, both Kiev and Moscow had made it known that the area and the city hosting the giant plant had been conquered by Russian tanks.
The news that the area was under control of Moscow had alarmed the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA which immediately called an emergency meeting for yesterday morning and made it known through its director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi , to be worried about “an unprecedented situation”. In his report to the UN agency, Grossi recalled that the Russian army has already taken control of another former nuclear plant that tragically ended up in the history books for the most serious nuclear accident in history: Chernobyl.
And now the Russian siege is tightening in Kiev. Bombs on the outskirts
by our correspondent Paolo Brera
In the evening, when the confirmations of the Russian tanks arrived in the city, Grossi asked that the troops stop fighting near the plants. Already in the morning he had appealed to Moscow to avoid actions that could compromise the safety of the reactors, because “any accident could have serious consequences and aggravate human suffering by causing environmental damage”. Ukraine has asked the UN agency to declare a “safe zone” of 30 km around the country’s four nuclear power plants.
Yesterday, the director of the IAEA Grossi also recalled two near-miss radioactive incidents in the past week: the missile that hit a waste storage station of the power plants in Kiev and a similar damaged plant near Kharkiv. Episodes which fortunately did not produce increases in radiation, but which underline “the risk that they will be damaged in an armed conflict”.