Inside Ukrainian nuclear power plant threatened by bombing

Every day, Olga is taken by bus from her home in the Russian-occupied city of Enerhodar, on the banks of the Dnipro River in southeastern Ukraine, to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, where she works.

The plant, the biggest nuclear complex of its kind in Europe, is the focus of growing global concern after days of bombing prompted calls for international experts to visit the facility and heightened fears of a potential nuclear accident.

Kiev has repeatedly accused Russian forces, who took over the plant in March, of storing heavy weapons inside the complex and using it as cover to launch attacks, knowing Ukraine cannot return fire without risking hitting one of the plant’s six reactors – a mistake that would lead to disaster. Moscow, meanwhile, claimed that Ukrainian troops are attacking the site. Both sides tried to point the finger at each other for threatening nuclear terrorism.

For Olga and her Ukrainian colleagues who still work at the plant, the specter of a nuclear disaster isn’t just a nightmare – it’s a daily reality.

It’s “like sleeping and watching a dream,” she told CNN in a recent telephone interview, describing the surreal and prolonged shock he experienced working at the factory, which although maintained by Russian forces, is still mainly operated by Ukrainian technicians.

In the months since the nuclear facility was captured, Ukrainian officials have slowly begun to return — carrying out tasks in partially destroyed rooms and only coming into contact with Russian soldiers as they pass through two checkpoints to enter the complex.

“After the occupation, only operational personnel worked at the station. There were many broken and burned rooms and windows. Then, little by little, they started asking people to come work for specific tasks,” Olga, whose name was changed to protect her identity, said.

“Now the part of the people who didn’t leave is working. About 35% to 40% of the workers left.”

The reduction in the number of employees and the intensification of fighting are making working conditions increasingly tenuous.

Ukraine and Russia again exchanged blame after more bombing around the plant overnight on Thursday, just hours after the United Nations urged both sides to cease military activities near the plant, warning of the worst if they didn’t. .

“Regrettably, rather than de-escalation, in recent days there have been reports of more deeply troubling incidents that could, if continued, lead to disaster,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. “I call for the removal of any personnel and military equipment from the factory and the prevention of any deployment of forces or equipment to the site.”

Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting in New York on Thursday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said recent attacks had destroyed parts of the plant, risking a potential “unacceptable” radiation leak. ” and urged a team of experts to have urgent access to the site, where the situation “is deteriorating very rapidly”.

“This is a serious time, serious time, and the IAEA must be allowed to conduct its mission in Zaporizhzhia as quickly as possible,” Grossi said.

Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear power company, accused Russian forces on Thursday of attacking a storage area for “radiation sources” and bombing a fire department near the plant. A day later, the company said in a statement on its Telegram account that the plant was operating “at the risk of violating radiation and fire safety standards”.

Ukraine’s Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi said on Friday that “there was no adequate control” over the plant, and the Ukrainian experts who remained there were not given access to some areas where they were supposed to be.

THE CNN could not confirm details provided by Energoatom or Monastyrskyi, but Grossi said some parts of the plant were inoperative. Olga also confirmed that parts of the complex are inaccessible to Ukrainian personnel.

Russia continued to accuse Ukraine of being behind the attacks. A local occupation administration official, Vladimir Rogov, told Russian state news agency Rossiya 24 on Friday that there was “constant damage” to the power transmission line at the plant and suggested that the complex could be “decommissioned”. – without any explanation of how this could happen.

Ukrainian officials say Russian rockets fired from the nuclear plant hit the city of Nikopol, on the right bank of the Dnipro River, and neighboring districts in the last week. At least 13 people were killed in the bombing overnight on Tuesday, and several more were injured on Wednesday and Thursday night, including a 13-year-old girl, according to local officials.

In recent months, Olga said she has seen Russian military equipment arriving at the nuclear complex, although much of it has been hidden from view. “Initially, there was equipment on the station’s territory, now there is even more,” she said, adding that employees are not allowed in the areas where it is stored.

But when she returns home from work, Russia’s firepower is clear, she said. “Horrors happen at night, they are bombing the city.”

“The blow that arrives on the right bank [do rio] shakes so much that houses and windows shake. It’s scary in the silence of the night when people are sleeping,” she added.

Across the Dnipro, in Nikopol, the attacks now seem relentless.

From the window of her house near the city’s harbor, Oksana Miraevska can look across the water and see the hail of incoming shells.

“If something happens to the plant, an accident, I can’t think about it. Do you think anything could help us? We are 7 km from the nuclear power plant on the other side of the river! Nothing will save us, I’m sure,” Miraevska, a 45-year-old small business owner, told CNN by phone. “That’s why I don’t even entertain that thought.”

When the bombing began last month, Miraevska said many residents fled in panic, but she stayed behind trying to help locally, mostly taking in strays. At night, she and her teenage son take the animals to the basement-turned-bomb shelter, where they all sleep.

“When they started bombing us, life in general changed. I live in the basement, we spent the night there. We’ve been sleeping there for a month,” Miraevska said.

“I don’t think the enemy should be underestimated,” he added.

It is the same message echoed by international experts warning of the disastrous impact that an errant projectile can have.

Last weekend, a fire damaged a dry storage facility — where barrels of spent nuclear fuel are kept at the plant — as well as radiation monitoring detectors, making it impossible to detect any potential leaks, according to Energoatom. The attacks also damaged a high-voltage line and forced one of the plant’s reactors to shut down.

This increase in bombing prompted the IAEA to step up its efforts to send a mission of experts to visit the plant to assess and secure the complex.

While an initial expert assessment found “no immediate threat to nuclear safety” at the plant, Grossi said on Thursday that “this could change at any time”. He added that although the agency was in frequent contact with Ukrainian and Russian authorities about the plant, the information provided was “contradictory”.

Demands for a cessation of hostilities have grown in the last week. The G7 – a group of large industrialized nations – released a statement from their meeting in Germany on Wednesday urging Russia to withdraw its forces and hand over control of the plant to Ukraine.

The statement blamed the Russian military, which the G7 countries said was “significantly increasing the risk of a nuclear accident or incident and putting the people of Ukraine, neighboring states and the international community at risk”.

A State Department spokesman said Thursday that the United States supported calls for a “demilitarized zone” around the nuclear plant and demanded that Russia “cease all military operations at or near Ukrainian nuclear facilities.”

Olga Voitovych, Yulia Kesaieva and Anna Chernova of CNN contributed to this report.