Stark warnings are being issued in Ukraine after Russian military forces seized Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Russia seized the nuclear plant after a fire sparked by overnight shelling burned for several hours.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is the largest facility of its kind in all of Europe. It is responsible for about 20 percent of Ukraine’s power generation.
This could be extremely harmful to Ukraine, and even outside of the borders. Officials have warned that if something happens, the impact could be 10 times the size of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which also happened in Ukraine when it was a part of the Soviet Union. It is considered the worst nuclear disaster in history both in cost and in casualties.
Thankfully radiation levels have not yet spiked. Essential equipment seems to be fine at the moment in the facility, and firefighters were able to extinguish the fire.
With Russia now in control of the nuclear plant, fears have been raised around the world. This comes as well following nuclear threats made by Russian President Vladimir Putin. On February 27, Putin put his country’s nuclear forces on “high alert.” Whether the seizing of this plant poses a larger threat remains to be seen, but experts fear it could be a warning sign that Putin is not afraid to put his hands on nuclear sites.
The acting president of the state-run nuclear power corporation Energoatom, Petrov Kotin, said that workers at the plant had been allowed by the Russian military forces to return to their posts, but that the employees had been working “under the barrel of machine guns” and were both physically and mentally exhausted.
Ukraine reportedly called for a ceasefire after forces attacked the power plant, located in southeastern Ukraine. However, just last night, the second round of peace talks concluded without a ceasefire being able to be reached.
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