Europe lived for about six hours in suspense as a result of the fire, finally extinguished, which led the Ukrainian government to warn that if the plant exploded there would be an impact “10 times larger than that of Chernobyl”, until now the largest atomic accident in history, and that it would be “the end” of life on the continent.
The fire was reported in the early hours of the day and only after 6 (1 in Argentina) was it reported that it had been extinguished.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg this morning condemned Russia’s “irresponsibility” for the incident.
“We have seen reports about the attack on that nuclear plant. This shows the irresponsibility” of this conflict, Stoltenberg said before an urgent meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, in the transatlantic alliance’s first reaction to this attack, the press reported. AFP news agency.
The Russian forces occupied in the last hours the Ukrainian nuclear territory, located about 150 kilometers north of the Crimean peninsula.
“The territory of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is occupied by the armed forces of the Russian Federation,” Ukraine’s atomic plant inspection agency said, insisting that no radioactive leak was detected.
“There have been no changes in the radiation situation,” he added.
According to the same source, “the operational staff controls the energy blocks and guarantees their operation in accordance with the requirements of the technical and safety regulations.”
Inspections are carried out to know precisely the damage, he added.
Of the six blocks, the first was put out of service, numbers 2, 3, 5 and 6 are in the cooling process and number 4 is operational.
The agency did not say what the status of the blocks was before the attack.
“Nuclear safety is now guaranteed,” Oleksander Starukh, head of the military administration of the Zaporizhia region, said last night on Facebook. The attack left no victims, Ukrainian rescuers said on Facebook.
The Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Dmitri Kuleba, called on Russia for an immediate ceasefire in the area and warned on Twitter that “if the Zaporizhia plant explodes”, its impact “will be 10 times larger than Chernobyl”, the plant where in 1986 what is considered to be the biggest atomic accident in universal history took place.
The mayor of Energodar -the town in the province of Zaporizhia where the plant is located, 52 kilometers southwest of the city of Zaporizhia-, Dmitri Orlov, confirmed a little later on Facebook that “the battles continue in the ascent to the plant nuclear”, which was “on fire”.
Meanwhile, the president of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, accused Russia of resorting to “nuclear terror” and of wanting to “repeat” the Chernobyl accident.
“No other country, except Russia, has ever fired on nuclear power plants, it is the first time in the history of humanity,” and “if there is an explosion, it is the end of everything, the end of Europe,” he said in a released video. this morning by the Ukrainian Presidency.
Likewise, the president of the United States, Joe Biden – who was on the phone with Zelensky when the news of the incident in Zaporizhia became known – demanded that Russia “stop its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency services to access the place. ”, according to a statement from the White House.
A few days after the invasion of Ukraine began, on February 24, Russia reported that it had taken control of Chernobyl and for a couple of days it had been struggling to do the same in Zaporizhia.
Hours before the bombing of Zaporizhia became known, the director of the IAEA, the Argentine Rafael Grossi, had urged Russia to “stop the use of force” and warned of a “serious danger if the reactors are hit.”
Source: Ambito
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