New Delhi: A fire at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, which was set off due to Russian shelling, has been extinguished Friday, the CNN reported.
The blaze had started in a training building outside the main reactor complex of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s State Emergency Services said. “There are no dead or injured,” the statement by the authorities on Telegram said.
Earlier, Ukraine had told the International Atomic Energy Agency the fire “has not affected ‘essential’ equipment,” and that there had been no change reported in radiation levels.
The plant has not sustained any critical damage and only one power generation unit out of six was operational when the fire broke out, Zaporizhzhia power plant spokesperson Andrey Tuz had said.
He had said that firefighters were initially met with guns and had turned around. The fire started around 2:30 a.m. local time Friday.
As soon as the news of the fire trickled in, several world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for updates on the nuclear power plant.
“Europe must wake up,” Zelensky said in a video message early Friday as he condemned the attack and called for Europe to take urgent actions.
“If there is an explosion, it is the end of Europe,” Zelensky added. “Only urgent Europe actions can stop Russian troops.”
The Ukrainian foreign ministry accused the Russian army of opening fire on the plant amid Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warning that if the plant blew, “it will be 10 times larger than Chornobyl”.
“No state except Russia has ever opened fire at nuclear power units. For the first time in human history, a terrorist state has resorted to nuclear terror. Only immediate European action can stop Russian troops,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine had tweeted.
.@ZelenskyyUa: “Russian army has opened fire on Zaporizhzhia NPP. No state except Russia has ever opened fire at nuclear power units. For the first time in human history, a terrorist state has resorted to nuclear terror. Only immediate European action can stop Russian troops”.
— MFA of Ukraine ?? (@MFA_Ukraine) March 4, 2022
Zaporizhzhia power plant in the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar is home to six Soviet-designed 950-megawatt reactors built between 1984 and 1995, with capacity of 5.7 gigawatts, enough to power more than 4 million homes. The site accounts for about 20% of the country’s electricity, according to its website.
(with inputs from Bloomberg and ANI)
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