A massive fire at Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant was extinguished on Friday, and officials said the plant in southeastern Ukraine was operating normally after it was taken over by Russian forces in a fight that caused global alarm. .
Separately, a presidential aide said Ukraine halted a Russian advance on the town of Mykolayiv after local officials said Russian troops had entered. If captured, the city of 500,000 in southern Ukraine – where Russian forces have made the most progress so far – would be the biggest to fall so far.
Officials said the fire at the Zaporizhzhia complex took place in a training center building, not the plant itself. An official at Energoatom, the state company that runs Ukraine’s four nuclear plants, said there had been no more clashes, the fire had been extinguished, radiation was at normal levels and Russian forces were in control.
“Employees are at their jobs providing for the normal operation of the station,” that employee told Reuters in a message.
He said his organization no longer had communication with plant managers, control over the radiation situation there, or oversight of potentially hazardous nuclear material in its six reactors and about 150 containers of spent fuel.
The Russian Defense Ministry also said the plant was operating normally. He attributed the fire to a “monstrous attack” by Ukrainian “saboteurs” and said his forces were in control.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said the plant was not damaged by what he believed to be a Russian shell. Only one reactor was working, with about 60% of capacity.
He described the situation as still tense, adding: “There’s nothing normal about it.”
A video of the plant verified by Reuters had previously shown a burning building and a hail of projectiles, before a large red-hot ball lit up the sky, exploding next to a parking lot and sending smoke throughout the complex.
The prospect that the fight could cause a potential nuclear disaster had knocked the world’s financial markets down.
Russia’s control over a power plant that supplies more than a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity was a major development after eight days of war in which further Russian advances were stalled by fierce resistance.
US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and other Western officials said there was no indication of high levels of radiation.
“Europeans, please wake up. Tell your politicians that Russian troops are shooting at a nuclear plant in Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video speech. In another speech, he urged Russians to protest.
Thousands of people are believed to have been killed or injured and more than 1 million refugees have fled Ukraine since February 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the biggest attack on a European state since World War II.
Russian forces advancing from three directions surrounded Ukrainian cities, attacking them with artillery and air strikes. Moscow says its aim is to disarm its neighbor and capture leaders it calls “neo-Nazis”. Ukraine and its Western allies call this an unfounded pretext for a war to conquer the country of 44 million people.
Russia had already captured the defunct Chernobyl plant north of Kiev, which spewed radioactive waste over much of Europe when it melted in 1986. The Zaporizhzhia plant is a different, safer kind.
Source: CNN Brasil
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