The occupation of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, the fighting around it and the intervention of the Russian military in the work of the plant could have led to an accident at least five times. Energoatom President Petr Kotin spoke about this in an interview with DW..

" If there were no diesel generators, then an accident would have occurred, including the melting of the reactor core. It is very dangerous. The equipment is degrading, the Russians are building some structures there, which is strictly forbidden to be done at a nuclear facility,"

According to him, Rosatom does not actually control the Russian military at the station.. During the year, about 500 Russian invaders are constantly at the nuclear power plant, military equipment is even in the machine rooms of the station.

" The station also houses missile systems, anti-aircraft installations, machine-gun nests on the roofs of the reactor compartments and checkpoints between power units.. The entire station is completely mined: access routes, the coastline of the Kakhovka reservoir, on which the ZNPP is located. A lot of animals are blown up by these mines on the coast and after these explosions the last power line is damaged again. It actually became a Russian military base, and they do whatever they want there,"

The same situation is observed in the storage of spent nuclear fuel..

" Near the site there were several arrivals, shelling, one of the rockets fell ten meters away, did not explode and remained there. Its trajectory clearly shows that this missile was flying from the territory occupied by the Russian army.. They make some kind of add-ons - coverings from above, stretched the grid, build some kind of wall around the storage. But you can’t interfere in the design of a nuclear facility, because this will lead to something irreparable,” Kotin said..

According to the President of Energoatom, out of six power units of the station, four units are in a " Power units for their own needs consume electricity from the unified grid of Ukraine through the last communication line. About 100 MW of constant consumption operate pumps for cooling nuclear reactors.

Recall that exactly a year ago on the same day, March 4, the Russian invaders seized the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, the largest and most powerful in Europe. During the seizure, three employees of the ZNPP were killed, the first destruction occurred.

Earlier, Energoatom stated that the Russians had brought the plant to a state where the Zaporizhzhya NPP could never work again..