Expert: Blast at Zaporizhzia ‘would be more terrifying than Hiroshima’

An explosion at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant ‘is not even comparable to Hiroshima or Nagasaki’, a Ukrainian opposition leader has told MailOnline. Such a blast would be ‘a much more terrifying and massive nuclear accident that, in the conditions of such a war, can lead to unpredictable consequences,’ he said. The warning from Yuriy Kostenko, the former Minister of Environmental Protection and Nuclear Safety of Ukraine, came as President Volodymyr Zelensky this week told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron that Russia was planning ‘dangerous provocations’ at the plant, the largest in Europe.

A statement issued by the Ukrainian armed forces quoted ‘operational data’ as saying that ‘explosive devices’ had been placed on the roof of the station’s third and fourth reactors on Tuesday. An attack was possible ‘in the near future’. Russia and Ukraine have regularly accused each other of putting the plant’s safety at risk since the Kremlin launched large-scale hostilities in Ukraine last February and seized the plant and the city it is located within days. 

Kostenko (pictured), the current leader of the Ukrainian People’s Party, warned of the scale of the disaster should Russia carry out an attack on the plant. ‘None of the analysts will dare to assess what to do and how when active combat operations are taking place in the territory of Zaporizhia Oblast and suddenly a reactor or a spent nuclear fuel storage facility explodes,’ he said. The fallout would be greater than that seen when the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed early last month, he said. It is believed Russia blew the dam from the inside in order to flood the region to the south, and thus prevent Ukraine from making gains in its counteroffensive in that region, which would have put even more pressure on Putin’s armies. Russia has accused Ukraine of destroying the dam, despite Moscow’s armies being in control of it at the time, and it being nearly impenetrable from the outside. ‘The disaster at the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant is a precursor to events that can occur on a much larger and more terrifying scale at the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant,’ Kostenko warned.

Mark Savchuk (pictured), Head of Oversight Committee of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, told MailOnline it would be foolish to rule out Russia carrying out such an attack in the face of the on-going Ukrainian counteroffensive. Savchuk specializes in the transparency of the energy sector and macro economic outlook, having studied civil engineering at City University, London. He agreed with Zelensky’s assessment that ‘Radiation has no borders,’ saying that an attack on the nuclear plant would not be confined to Ukraine. ‘Zelensky is not wrong,’ Savchuk said. ‘After numerous atrocities committed in Ukraine (Bucha Massacre, daily bombings of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure by cruise and ballistic missiles, blowing up Kakhovka Dam) it is completely plausible to assume that Russian forces, faced with a push from Ukrainian counter-offensive, will choose to blow up Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant before retreating from the occupied Energodar.’

‘Russia is extremely unstable and is capable of unspeakable horror including nuclear terrorism,’ he added, before calling on the West to cut remaining ties with Russia. ‘I think it is a good time for the Western countries to ask themselves whether they want to do business with a country that is capable of blackmailing the whole continent both with massive man-made ecological disasters (blowing up Nova Kakhovka Dam) and now – a possible sabotage at ZNPP,’ he warned. The Zaporizhzhia plant is the largest in Europe and among the tenth largest in the world, and before the war generated about half of Ukraine’s nuclear power. It consists of six Soviet-designed water-cooled reactors that contain uranium 235, each of which has the capacity to generate 950 megawatts – with a single megawatt capable of providing energy for 400 to 900 homes for a whole year. The reactors need to be constantly cooled by passing water through them. If the water is cut out, then a reactor could lose cooling and the fuel could start melting. This would cause pressure to build up, ultimately leading to an explosion.

There have only been two nuclear accidents considered ‘major’ by the International Nuclear Event Scale – the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the then-Soviet controlled Ukraine, and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster which was triggered by a tsunami that flooded the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Neither were triggered by an act of war. Only the United States had so far used nuclear weapons in anger – in the 1945 attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ‘Fat Man’, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, had a blast yield of 21 kilotons. The blast killed an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 people. Should the ZPP be attacked, many people would have to be evacuated to escape an invisible radioactive cloud that would spill out over Ukraine and Europe, with its effect being felt for years to come – as was the case with the Chernobyl disaster, which saw thousands of people flee their homes in Ukraine. Pictured: The ruins of the Japanese city are seen from the air after the United States dropped an atomic bomb towards the end of the Second World War. Read the full story: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12266705/Blast-Zaporizhzhia-NPP-terrifying-massive-Hiroshima-expert-warns.html?ito=msngallery

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