Russian actions around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant flirt with catastrophe

‘The worst case is an accident like six times Fukushima,’ says Ukrainian nuclear safety expert Dmitry Gumenyuk. He is worried about the Zaporizhzhya power plant that fell into the hands of Russian troops 10 days ago. Although Gumenyuk describes the situation as stable for now, any military action that endangers the plant’s staff or damages the reactors’ cooling systems could have disastrous consequence – not just for Ukraine but for the rest of Europe, too.

With its six reactors, Zaporizhzhya is Europe’s biggest nuclear power station and among the 10 largest worldwide. It supplies one-fifth of Ukraine’s electricity. A few days after Russian troops captured the nearby city of Enerhodar, they ‘gathered a lot of tanks and guns in front of the power plant and started shooting at it’, says Gumenyuk. Two people were injured, a training building was hit and a localised fire broke out. ‘They didn’t damage any important systems, which is very fortunate,’ Gumenyuk says.