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Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency, Energoatom, warned on Friday that it believes Russia is trying to disconnect the Zaporizhia power plant from the country’s power grid as concerns about a potential nuclear catastrophe continue to grow.
The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant has been under Russian control since March, but operations remain under the control of Ukrainian authorities as artillery and fighting continue to threaten Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. .
In a statement on Friday, Energoatom said: “There is information that the Russian occupation forces plan to shut down the power block in the near future and disconnect it from the power supply line to the Ukrainian power system,” Reuters first reported. rice field.
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“The Russian military is currently looking for fuel suppliers for diesel generators, which are supposed to turn on after the power supply is shut down in the absence of an external power source for the nuclear fuel cooling system,” it added. .
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant supplies about a third of Ukraine with electricity, and disconnecting it from the Ukrainian grid would mean more problems as Kyiv prepares for the coming winter. There is likely to be.
Energoatom has accused Moscow of preparing a “massive provocation” around the plant, and reports surfaced this week of a cyberattack targeting a Russian-operated plant.
Russia has also accused the Ukrainian military of setting fire to the factory.
“The potential threat posed by Europe’s largest nuclear power plant could be ten times the scale of the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters,” Energoatom said on Friday.
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More than 500 Russian soldiers are stationed at the factory, and several missile strikes over the past few weeks have warned officials will release massive radiation leaks if units containing nuclear waste are damaged. , factories are increasingly under threat.
The plant’s communication lines, radiation monitoring sensors, nitrogen-oxygen stations, hydrogen pipelines and other parts of the plant’s infrastructure have already been damaged, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week.
International authorities, including the United Nations, have called on all sides to cease fighting in the vicinity of the nuclear power plant and for Russia to withdraw from the area.
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But Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Friday refuted those demands, suggesting that Russia’s occupation of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant would prevent a “Chernobyl scenario”.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ivan Nechaev was quoted on Thursday as saying the UN proposal to demilitarize the plant was “unacceptable.”