The situation at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in connection with constant shelling and the deployment of MLRS and other military weapons by Russia there is close to what happened at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant. One of the station's engineerstold the BBC Ukrainian Service about this.
According to the engineer, high-voltage power lines connecting the Zaporizhzhya NPP with the energy system of Ukraine were damaged due to shelling at the plant, and there is a possibility of a “nuclear accident”.
The engineer recalled that the power plant cannot work “to nowhere” and must supply electricity to the power grid. Otherwise, the power units are switched off in an emergency, and a “blackout” (stop) will begin. According to him, such a situation is beneficial for Russia: the country deliberately arranges a “blackout” in order to then provide the opportunity to connect the station to the Russian energy system through the ZNPP-Melitopol-Dzhankoy line.
The interlocutor also noted that the situation is not similar to Chernobyl, but rather resembles what happened at Fukushima due to the shutdown of the reactor cooling. At the same time, in the case of Fukushima, there was a natural disaster, the engineer emphasizes:
“There is no help from the world in this situation. Every year, missions from the IAEA and other international organizations in the field of nuclear energy come to visit us. But when this happens, they all stand aside. The maximum that we hear is the words of "deep concern". Fukushima was a disaster because the earthquake and tsunami stopped the reactor from cooling. As a result, a steam explosion occurred in the core, and the sealed zone of the reactor was destroyed. Radioactive substances got out. This scenario may be repeated at the ZNPP: but the causes are not a natural disaster. This is the shelling of the Russian army.”
In addition, the interlocutor said that Rosatom employees “sit in shelters” during the shelling. At the same time, some Russian military men calmly walk around the territory, knowing that “they are the ones who are shooting,” although they claim about the “shelling” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
From the first day of the occupation, the station personnel have been disappearing, says the engineer. He stated that first they kidnap public activists from Enerhodar, then the ATO participants and their relatives, and then everyone who identifies himself as Ukrainian:
“They torture them to death. Recently, the Russian military claimed that there were abandoned weapons in the cooling pools. They wanted to force our full-time scuba diver from the hydro department to dive there and look for weapons. He refused. He was beaten to death."
Now the station staff is depressed, as employees have to live in constant fear in conditions of occupation without normal communications, shops, ATMs and civilization, buy food "from the trunks of cars in the markets."
Ukraine and Russia in August repeatedly accused each other of shelling the ZNPP. On August 11, the messages of the Ukrainian Energoatom and the pro-Russian representative of the “administration” Rogov were almost identical: they wrote about “five arrivals”, grass fires and a failed “shift change” at the station. The Ministry of Defense of Russia and the Armed Forces of Ukraine with Energoatom of Ukraine directly accuse each other of nuclear terrorism.
The Insider's sources at the ZNPP reported suspicious activity of Russian soldiers on the territory of the station. The publication also has a video at its disposal, in which Russian military trucks drive into the territory of the nuclear power plant and unload some kind of cargo. According to this source, the machine room was mined. Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, confirmed in The Insider's stream that Russia is indeed carrying out mining on the territory of the ZNPP, and also stores shells of "different capacity and different power" right in the shops.
