Explained | What happened at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant?
The Hindu
Russia shelled the buildings around Europe’s largest Nuclear power plant, located in Ukraine early on March 4
The story so far: Nine days into its destructive military operation, Russia captured Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power plant on March 4. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in the early hours of the day that shelling by Russian troops had hit the site of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, causing a fire to break out.
Ukraine’s local state authorities said a fire had broken out at a building which functions as a training center outside the nuclear plant. Night time video footage from the plant showed the building on fire and shells were seen dropping on and around it, followed by an explosion near it.
An employee at the plant first reported through Telegram that Russian forces had attacked the nuclear power facility and there was a “a real threat of nuclear danger at the largest nuclear power plant in Europe”.
This was followed by a confirmation from the Ukrainian Foreign Minister at 8 am, who said that Russian forces were “firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia NPP,” adding that an immediate ceasefire should be instated so that firefighters can control the blaze. Mr. Kuleba also warned that if the plant blew up, the disaster would be “10 times larger” than the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.
At around 9:50am, the Ukrainian emergency service alerted that the fire at the training center in Energodar (the city of the NPP site) had been extinguished and radiation levels at the site were normal; no casualties were reported. The service added that only one of the six nuclear power reactors was operating at 690 Megawatt power and of the rest, one was “in outage” and others were being cooled down. All the reactors very safely shut down eventually.
Vienna-headquartered nuclear energy watchog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) then said that “essential equipment” at the power plant site had not been affected.
The attack drew sharp criticism from the US and European countries and early reports of the incident sent Asian stock markets spiralling.