Nuclear power plant fire after Russian bombing

DrAccording to the authorities, the fire at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant Zaporizhia has been extinguished. Ukraine’s civil protection authority said on Facebook that the fire was completely extinguished on Friday morning at 6:20 a.m. local time (5:20 a.m. CET). No one was injured in the fire. A fire broke out at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant with six reactors after a Russian attack. According to the authorities, the Russian military initially did not allow firefighting teams to reach the scene of the fire.

It was not clear at first exactly where the fire broke out. The plant consists, among other things, of an administration building and six reactor blocks, and is the largest nuclear power plant in the country. According to Ukrainian media, bullets hit an office building. The information cannot initially be verified independently. Dmytro Orlu, the mayor of the nearby city of Inerhodar, demanded an immediate halt to the fighting for security reasons, Friday evening via the Telegram news service. He had previously reported the presence of about 100 Russian military vehicles in the area.

Chernobyl memory

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter that the Russian army was firing at the facility “from all sides”. “The fire has already broken out. If it exploded, it would be 10 times bigger than Chernobyl! Russia should stop firing immediately to allow firefighters to get to the fire. There was no confirmation from the Russian side of the alleged bombing.

On April 26, 1986, one of the worst disasters in the peaceful use of nuclear energy occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. After the reactor block at the nuclear power plant exploded, the radioactive material spread to large parts of Europe over a period of several days.