MELITOPOL, May 5. /TASS/. The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) continues to operate as per normal following the decision to evacuate people from several cities in the Zaporozhye Region amid intensified shelling by Ukrainian troops, Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the director general of Russia’s Rosenergoatom nuclear power engineering company, told TASS on Friday.

"The ZNPP is operating as usual, no evacuation measures linked with the relocation of employees are either being taken or planned," he said. "As of now, we have no information so that we could specify plans and the sequence of actions in the context of the decision of the acting region governor. The plant’s employees continue to work as usual."

"There is no panic among the employees. They continue to work routinely. Their families are all right. Our further plans will depend on objective changes in the situation," he said, adding that experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also "continue to work in the same regime."

Acting governor of the Zaporozhye Region, Yevgeny Balitsky, said earlier on Friday that residents of 18 settlements will be temporarily relocated to safer places due to intensified shelling by Ukrainian troops. According to the region’s deputy prime minister, Andrey Kozenko, around 70,000 people are to be evacuated. The evacuation is voluntary, he stressed.