The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant has been under attack for weeks. Hardly a day goes by without artillery shells falling on or near the site. It looks like Russia is behind the attacks. The Kremlin invaders actually want to tap the electricity in Ukraine.
For months, Russian soldiers have been entrenched in the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, and from here they are shelling Ukrainian positions on the other side of the Dnipro. However, the nuclear power plant itself, about 50 kilometers from the city of Zaporizhia of the same name, is becoming the target of attacks with increasing frequency. Shells have been falling on the site and in the immediate vicinity since the end of July. Both sides accuse each other of escalating.
First of all, the Ukrainian military actually claimed responsibility for a drone attack near the power plant. A tent city and enemy technology were attacked with kamikaze drones, according to the military intelligence service in Kyiv at the end of July.
In the meantime, however, it looks like the Russians themselves are attacking the power plant site. A Ukrainian power plant engineer told the BBC the Russians knew exactly where to hit the terrain so it would be “painful” but “not fatal”.
According to him, the Russians are firing at the nuclear power plant from a nearby industrial site. This is supported by the fact that the projectiles could only be seen and heard in the air for a few seconds before the impact on the nuclear power plant site, as eyewitnesses on site report.
The occupiers are playing on people’s fears of a new Chernobyl and blaming Ukraine for it – that seems to be the Russian strategy.
The artillery shells that hit the nuclear power plant site are even the lesser of two evils. According to nuclear experts, the reactors at the Zaporizhia power plant, which have been upgraded several times, “completely meet Western European safety standards”. The protective covers around the reactor blocks are designed to withstand a plane crash. So individual projectiles can do little harm to the nuclear power plant.
It will be more dangerous if Russia actually tries to connect the nuclear power plant to the Russian power grid. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expects a “large-scale provocation” at the nuclear power plant, with the aim of justifying a decoupling of the nuclear power plant from the Ukrainian power grid.
To do this, the Russian occupiers would have to cut all overland power lines to the nuclear power plant and switch to emergency power, explains Petro Kotin, president of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant operator Enerhoatom. “The situation is very dangerous because there is only one functioning connection line to the Ukrainian power grid.”
The Russians had already damaged three power lines at the beginning of August, and the nuclear power plant is currently only connected to a single one. In order to reconnect the nuclear power plant, Russia would also have to cut the last line. “Then there’s a power outage,” warns Kotin. In this case, the fate of the power plant depended on 20 diesel generators, which would have to ensure the cooling of the reactor blocks and fuel rods.
According to Kotin, connecting the nuclear power plant from the Ukrainian grid to the Russian grid would take about three days. “Everything will depend on how long the generators last and how reliable they are,” says Kotin. The power plant president assumes ten days. Only nobody has ever checked whether the generators really work for ten days. Enerhoatom reports that the Russian occupiers are currently looking for fuel suppliers for the diesel generators.
Shortly after the start of the war, the Ukraine and neighboring Moldova disconnected from the joint power grid with Russia and joined the European power grid. Russia obviously wants to reconnect Europe’s largest nuclear power plant to its own network and supply the annexed Crimea with electricity from the occupied nuclear power plant. The occupied Ukrainian territories could then also be synchronized with the Russian network.
Russia wants to “destroy the power plant’s infrastructure, damage the transmission lines and cause a power outage in southern Ukraine,” the Ukrainian government recently said in a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In any case, Russia cannot simply switch off the nuclear power plant. After that, it wouldn’t be so easy to start up, analyzes the “Wall Street Journal”. 11,000 people worked on the site before the Russian invasion, thousands have long since fled. In the event of the nuclear power plant being shut down, more workers would likely flee. But Russia is dependent on the employees. The occupiers themselves have too few skilled workers, say nuclear experts.
Instead, the Kremlin troops want to steal the electricity. “That would be the biggest power robbery of all time,” the Wall Street Journal quoted an American energy expert as saying.