MOSCOW, August 16. /TASS/. The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant can be mothballed but it will be impossible to evacuate containers with nuclear waste from its territory, Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Zaporozhye region military-civilian administration’s council, said on Tuesday.

"There is a possibility [to mothball the plant]. It is very expensive and it will be za minus from the economic point of view. It means that the station will be shut down <…>. But we will not be able to evacuate nuclear waste. All these 174 containers will stay where they are, anyway. Or Ukrainian troops will be targeting them when we evacuate them," he said in an interview with the Solovyov Live television channel.

Located in the city of Energodar, the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant is controlled by Russian troops. In recent days, Ukrainian forces delivered several strikes at its territory using unmanned aerial vehicles, heavy artillery and multiple rocket launch systems. It most cases, such attacks are repelled by air defense systems but several shells hit infrastructure facilities and the vicinity of the nuclear waste storage.