“Today, for the first time in history, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant stopped,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a Facebook video posted Thursday evening.
He said that a nuclear accident was narrowly avoided when the “emergency protection of the power units worked – after the last working line of the plant’s power return to the Ukrainian power system was damaged by Russian shelling.”
Russian Federation troops began targeting the power plant, the largest one in Europe, soon after the invasion of Ukraine began in late February.
“Deployment of Russian military personnel and weaponry at the nuclear facility is unacceptable and disregards the safety, security, and safeguards principles that all members of the [International Atomic Energy Agency] have committed to respect,” said an Aug. 12 joint statement from Ukraine, the U.S., the U.K., the European Union and 40 other nations.
“Diesel generators were immediately activated to provide energy to the plant itself, to support it after the shutdown,” Zelensky said Thursday. “The world must understand what a threat this is: if the diesel generators hadn’t turned on, if the automation and our staff of the plant had not reacted after the blackout, then we would already be forced to overcome the consequences of the radiation accident. Russia has put Ukraine and all Europeans in a situation one step away from a radiation disaster.”
According to the World Nuclear Association, there have only been two major accidents at nuclear power plants, including the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine that resulted in 46 casualties. During Chernobyl 28 people died in explosions, others experienced radiation sickness and hundreds near the site later developed thyroid cancer.
There are also socio-economic and psychological impacts of nuclear disasters, said the World Nuclear Association.
Zelensky said occupied areas in the south of Ukraine are “already in a state of humanitarian disaster,” and that access to electricity, water and sewage has been cut off there.
From the start of the invasion through Aug. 21, 13,477 civilian casualties have been reported in Ukraine, including 5,587 people killed and 7,890 people injured, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“I want to assure all Ukrainians: we are doing everything to prevent an emergency scenario. But it depends not only on our state,” said Zelensky of Zaporizhzhia. “The key thing is that such international pressure is needed that will force the occupiers to immediately withdraw from the territory of the Zaporizhzhia NPP. The IAEA and other international organizations must act much faster than they’re acting now.”
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