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Conditions at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant have deteriorated, Ukraine says. [1]
['Matthew Mpoke Bigg']
Date: 2023-03-07
Ukrainian authorities say the condition of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine has deteriorated significantly in the year since Russian forces occupied it, and Moscow’s aim may be to make it unusable by the time it is eventually returned to Ukraine.
Russian soldiers have recently set up machine guns on the grounds of the plant, placed military equipment in engine rooms, covered windows with sandbags and even carried out indoor welding work that has set off fire alarms, Ukraine’s state nuclear company, Energoatom, said on Tuesday in a post on the Telegram social messaging app.
Those actions come on top of damage from shelling last summer, including to an area where spent nuclear fuel is stored; disruptions to the plant’s management in power struggles with Russian occupiers; and the shutdown of the complex’s six reactors.
“There is a feeling that one of the occupiers’ goals is to leave the Z.N.P.P. in an inoperable condition after its liberation,” Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, said on Ukrainian television last week.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/world/europe/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant.html
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