Army specialists helping Rosatom secure Zaporozhye nuke plant – official

MOSCOW, November 18. /TASS/. Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom and radiation, chemical and biological protection troops are taking all measures to ensure security at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), Zaporozhye Region Governor Yevgeny Balitsky said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Today, Rosatom is taking every measure to protect the facility. While we are not receiving electricity from it for now, as our infrastructure is being systematically disrupted, the plant’s safety is at a high level. And a regiment of radiation, chemical and biological protection troops which has been additionally deployed, today is doing its job so we can confidently assert that there is no nuclear threat and this particular facility is under control,” Balitsky said.
As for Ukrainian attacks on residential buildings, the governor specified that regional authorities are implementing all programs on aiding those affected.
“There is a number of state programs that we are implementing in the event of damage: paying out compensation for lost residences; we have high-quality emergency shelters and we are housing people at our resort facilities,” the official said.
Located in Energodar, the Zaporozhye nuclear facility, with roughly 6GW of capacity, is the largest of its kind in Europe. Russia took control of the plant on February 28, 2022, in the first days of its special military operation in Ukraine. Since then, units of the Ukrainian army have periodically conducted shelling both of residential districts in nearby Energodar and the premises of the nuclear plant itself, by means of drones, heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS). In most cases, air defense systems repel the attacks, although several times shells hit infrastructure facilities and the vicinity of a nuclear waste storage depot. In order to protect the ZNPP against shelling attacks, engineering structures, forming a safety net of sorts, have been built on its premises. All six power units of the nuclear facility are in a “cold shutdown” mode without producing any electricity.