“Fire at Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant after Russian attack”

“Fire at Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant after Russian attack”

The Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine is raging after a Russian attack. A spokesman for the nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, confirmed this in the night from Thursday to Friday, AFP reports.

The fire broke out at a training building outside the security perimeter of the nuclear power plant, the Ukrainian government’s emergency service said Friday morning. The director of the nuclear power plant has told television channel Ukraine 24 that radiation safety is under control, Reuters reports.

“After a bombing by Russian soldiers on the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, a fire broke out,” spokesman Andri Toez said earlier on the plant’s Telegram channel. shot at close range,” he continued in another video. “The first energy unit has already been hit. Stop this!”

According to the mayor of the nearby town of Energodar, fierce fighting is taking place between Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, Reuters reports. The mayor, Dmytro Orlov, said in a message on his Telegram channel that there were casualties, but he did not provide further details.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Koeleba has urgently called for an immediate end to shelling around the nuclear power plant and for firefighters to extinguish the fire. “If this explodes, it will be ten times worse than Chernobyl,” he wrote on Twitterreferring to the disaster at that nuclear power plant in 1986.

The nuclear power plant consists of six reactors and is responsible for more than a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity supply. Earlier, Ukrainian authorities reported that Russian troops had entered the site with tanks and attempted to take control of the nuclear power plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has expressed concern about the fighting near the nuclear power plant.