Ukrainian forces are making sluggish but steady progress along the southern front, but the energy minister told TIME that the Ukrainian government has begun planning for the possibility that Russian forces would damage the nuclear power facility they took at the outset of the invasion.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe’s largest, is located near the front lines, less than 100 kilometers from a group of settlements that Ukraine has retaken from Russia in recent weeks. “I do not believe that they would leave the station operational,” Minister German Galushchenko said of the Russians, should the Ukrainians be successful in retaking the plant and driving them out of the region. If they were to attack, “they could do a lot of damage, so much so that it would be very difficult for us to operate the station.”
All six nuclear reactors at the plant have been put into cold shutdown since early June, stopping electricity generation and lowering the potential for a major catastrophe that might release a lot of radiation. Engineers at the plant took that measure after a neighboring dam burst, threatening a critical source of water used to cool the reactors. A New York Times investigation found that there was growing evidence that Russian soldiers, who had control of the dam at the time, were responsible for its destruction.
Ukrainian authorities’ hopes that Russia would spare the nuclear power station were dashed when the dam in the captured town of Nova Kakhovka was destroyed, Galushchenko added. “I can tell you that when they leave, when they run from there, they mine almost everything in the energy infrastructure,” the energy minister stated, speaking from experience after visiting regions of Ukraine recently freed from Russian rule. The depth of this mining is beyond your comprehension. Even in the smallest of settlements, there are millions upon millions of mines.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a warning in early July that “objects resembling explosives” had been placed on the tops of many buildings at the factory by Russian soldiers. He said that the Ukrainian security agencies had received information that the Russians might be trying to “simulate an attack on the plant.” Satellite photography taken two days later revealed new white structures atop the building. The white objects in the photographs cannot be identified, according to independent specialists.
Russia claims that Ukraine’s military actions to terminate Russian occupation have endangered the nuclear facilities. Over the course of over a year, Russian armed personnel have overseen restricted inspections of the captured plant by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.In July, the U.N. agency reported detecting what it called “directional anti-personnel mines on the periphery” of the plant, the latest of many such observations by inspectors. Explosives are “inconsistent” with the IAEA’s safety regulations, general director Rafael Grossi stated un a statement at the time. On the other hand, he said that the explosion of the mines “should not affect” the safety mechanisms in place to prevent a nuclear accident.