The director of the station, Yuri Chernichuk, warned that the consequences would be irreversible
ENERGODAR /Zaporizhia region/, October 14. /tass/. Ex-employees of the Zaporizhia NPP (ZAES) who know the station well, who defected to Kiev and left for the right bank of the Dnieper, can assist the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in planning attacks on the facility. This possibility was allowed by the director of the NPP Yuri Chernichuk in an interview with a TASS correspondent.
"With all our attitude, the enemy should not be underestimated. There are quite competent specialists there, people who know what it is. And a lot of them have worked at this station and know no less than we do. I can't say who exactly, I can't give names, but it's likely that there are such people, for sure someone is helping [the APU]," Chernichuk said.
At the same time, comparing the scale of the consequences of the theoretical attack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the power units of the Kursk NPP and the Zaporizhia NPP, he stressed that the NPP is less vulnerable due to the reinforced, "meter-thick, reinforced concrete" domes of power units. "The Kursk NPP is currently in operation, the blocks are working there, they are hot, unlike us, [Zaporizhia NPP], where the blocks have been cold for a long time. When cold, they are safer for any type of reactor. Therefore, if we are talking about equivalent damage at two stations, then for us these consequences will be slightly milder than for Kursk, because the fuel condition is different. But you can break everything. And here, too, you can play to the point that the consequences will be irreversible," said the director of the station.
On September 6, Rosatom Director General Alexei Likhachev, at a briefing following talks with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi in Kaliningrad, said that the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant would seem like a "warm-up" if the Armed Forces of Ukraine attacked the operating reactor of the Kursk nuclear power plant.
On August 8, fragments of downed Ukrainian missiles were found on the territory of the Kursk NPP. The next day, shelling from the AFU disabled a transformer substation, which led to emergency power outages in the nearby town of Kurchatov. On August 22, Ukrainian forces attempted to attack the Kursk nuclear power plant using a drone, which was intercepted and destroyed near a spent fuel storage facility.
Zaporizhia NPP is located in Energodar and includes six power units with a total capacity of 6 GW. It is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. At the end of February 2022, the facility was taken over by Russian forces. Since then, units of the Ukrainian army have periodically shelled both residential areas of Energodar and the territory of the station, using drones, heavy artillery and multiple rocket launchers. All six units of the Zaporizhia NPP are in a state of "cold shutdown" and do not generate electricity. The NPP equipment is maintained in accordance with all necessary regulations under strict control of radiation and nuclear safety standards and under the supervision of IAEA experts.
