MOSCOW, August 6. /TASS/. Deliberate regular shelling of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (NPP) by Ukrainian armed formations poses a real nuclear threat not only to Ukraine, but also to Europe, and the scale of potential radioactive contamination will exceed the consequences of the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, the chief of Russia’s National Defense Management Center, said on Saturday.
"The cases of shelling of Zaporozhye NPP by Ukrainian armed groups are intentional and regular, which poses a real threat to nuclear security not only in Ukraine, but also in Europe. An accident at the Zaporozhye NPP will trigger a global man-made disaster, which will significantly exceed the consequences of accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima NPPs by the scale of radioactive contamination," said Mizintsev, who heads the Russian Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine.
"The radiation contamination zone (over 5,300 square km wide, about 420 km long) will affect the populations of the Kiev, Zaporozhye, Kharkov, Poltava, Kherson, Odessa, Nikolayev, Kirovograd, Vinnitsa regions, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, the border areas of Russia and Belarus, as well as of Moldova, Bulgaria and Romania," he said.
Mizintsev pointed out that it was not the first provocation carried out by the Kiev regime at radiation-hazardous facilities.
On Friday, Vladimir Rogov, a council member of the region’s military-civilian administration, said that Ukrainian troops had shelled the area around the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant three times during the day, causing fire and damaging two power lines crucial to the operation of the power units.
The Zaporozhye NPP is the largest in Europe. It produced a quarter of Ukraine’s electricity. The total capacity of its six reactors is about 6,000 megawatts. Since 1996, the Zaporozhye NPP has been a separate division of the Ukraine-controlled national nuclear energy generating company Energoatom. In March 2022, the facility was taken over by Russian forces. At the moment the power plant operates at 70% of its capacity, because there is an oversupply of electricity in the liberated territory of the Zaporozhye Region. There are plans for arranging electricity supply to Crimea.