The shelling of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant Zaporizhzhya causes more and more people to worry about an upcoming nuclear disaster. The UN’s atomic energy agency, the IAEA, claims there is a “very substantial risk of a nuclear disaster”, but the organization has so far refused to visit the area for an inspection.
The fear is also shared by Petro Kotin, CEO of the state-owned nuclear energy company Energoatom, which operates the now Russian-occupied nuclear power plant. In an exclusive interview with TV4 Nyheterna, he talks about the concerns about what might happen now.
– We want to warn the whole world that the situation is serious.
It was last Friday that one of the reactors was shut down after what Energoatom describes as Russian artillery shelling. Russia, for its part, believes that it is Ukraine that is the reason behind the shelling. The shutdown means that only two of six reactors are operating at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which was captured by Russian invasion forces in March but is still operated by Ukrainian engineers.
Listen to the interview with Zaporizhzhya CEO Petro Kotin in the player above.