News have it that the Ukrainian officials have said that the unprecedented attack on a Ukraine nuclear power plant, which is the largest in Europe, has sent shudders around the world. But a fire that broke out at the Zaporizhzhia site could lead to damage and definitely unlikely to result in the kind of devastation seen in the last atomic disaster on Ukrainian soil, the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter early Friday that a fire had broken out at the plant in southeastern Ukraine after Russian’s shelling overnight. One shell hit the plant’s first production unit, which was under maintenance, according to Petro Kotin, the head of Ukraine’s Energoatom nuclear power utility, in charge of the Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant.
The facility near the city of Enerhodar, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) from Chernobyl has a capacity of 5.7 gigawatts, enough to power more than 4 million homes. Kuleba had earlier warned that an explosion would be 10 times larger than Chernobyl.
The Ukraine Nucler Power plant’s second and third units were put into safe “cold mode” and the fourth remained in operation as it was the most distant from the shelling zone, said Kotin. The reactors are “being protected by robust containment structures,” U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
