Russian troops have attacked and seized the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant , which is located in central Ukraine.
As reported by the state nuclear regulator of Ukraine, the plant’s reactors, which are six, remain intact and there have been no changes in the radiation status at the moment.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has charged that Russian forces were “firing from all sides” at the plant.
“The Russians must stop the attack IMMEDIATELY, allow the firefighters to pass, establish a security zone!” Minister Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
The 6GW Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, located in Energodar, Ukraine, is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe . It is owned and operated by Ukraine’s National Nuclear Power Generation Company, NNEGC Energoatom.
It is one of the four operational nuclear power plants in the country and generates up to 42 billion kWh of electricity, which represents approximately 40% of the total electricity generated by all nuclear power plants in Ukraine and one fifth of the annual production of electricity in this country.
The atomic plant has been in operation since 1984 and consists of six pressurized water reactor units with a gross electrical capacity of 1,000 MW each. Each generating block of the plant consists of a VVER-1000/V-320 reactor, a K-1000-60/1500-2 steam turbine and a TWW-1000-4 generator. Soviet-designed VVER-1000s are PWRs designed to operate for 30 years.
The Council of Ministers of the USSR decided to build a series of nuclear power plants, including the Zaporizhia NPP, in 1978 after the first unit of the Chernobyl NPP started operations.
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster led the Supreme Council of Ukraine to order a moratorium in 1990 on the construction of new nuclear power units in Ukraine, suspending construction work on reactor 6 at this plant. However, increased demand for electricity, among other things, caused the moratorium to be lifted, and the unit ended up being connected to the grid in 1995, becoming the first nuclear reactor unit in an independent Ukraine.
What would happen if it exploded?
“If it explodes it will be 10 times bigger than Chernobyl” in 1986, warned the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has also warned of the danger of hitting the plant’s reactors.
