KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine is looking at the option of shutting down its Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant for safety reasons and is worried about the reserves of diesel fuel used for backup generators, Kyiv’s top nuclear safety expert said on Wednesday.
The imperilled facility – Europe’s largest nuclear power plant – remains disconnected from the Ukrainian grid after shelling cut its external power lines. Moscow and Kyiv accuse each other of shelling the plant risking a nuclear disaster.
“The option of switching off the station is being assessed, if conditions necessitating the station to be switched off arise,” Oleh Korikov, acting head of Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate, told a news briefing by video link.
He said the facility was supplying its own electricity needs, but that backup diesel generators would have to be fired up if it remained disconnected, though he gave no time frame for that eventuality.
He said it was extremely difficult to replenish the reserves of diesel because of Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. Moscow’s troops captured the plant in early March but it is still operated by Ukrainian technicians.
“We could potentially reach a situation where the diesel runs out, which would cause an accident involving the damage of the active zones of the reactors, which would cause the expulsion of radioactive substances into the environment,” he said.
“This would have consequences not only for the territory of Ukraine, but also cross-border consequences,” he said.
Shutting down the vast, six-reactor nuclear plant would pile further strain on Ukraine which is already bracing for a winter of energy shortages as the war rages on in its east and south.
(Reporting by Max Hunder and Pavel Polityuk; writing Tom Balmforth; editing by Tomasz Janowski and Philippa Fletcher)
