Russia risks ‘catastrophe’ by occupying Ukrainian nuclear plant 

Head of state-owned operator calls for demilitarisation around contested Zaporizhzhia facility.
 The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is operating on a knife edge and the risk of a disaster at Europe’s biggest atomic power station is rising, according to the head of the Ukrainian company that operates the facility. Petro Kotin, president of state-owned Energoatom, said that, on a scale of one to 10, the danger level was “between seven and eight, but that is optimistic and anything could happen at any time”. “In one minute we could be at 10,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times. Ukrainian officials have continually stressed the risks of the Russian occupation at the plant, which has been at the centre of fighting since Vladimir Putin’s troops seized it in the early weeks of the war. Ukraine and Russia have since accused each other of risking disaster by shelling at and around the facility. In the wake of the latest strikes on Monday, the plant was severed from its connection to the wider Ukrainian electric grid for the first time, leaving it relying on its own power to run safety systems, Kotin said. Although Zaporizhzhia’s reactors are designed to withstand the impact of an aircraft, the fighting has threatened to disrupt the operations of its water cooling systems, increasing the risk of meltdown, Kotin warned. “This situation could bring us to nuclear catastrophe,” he said. The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday that Zaporizhzhia “continues to receive the electricity it needs for safety from its sole operating reactor” and that while the power was “deliberately disconnected” the line itself was not damaged. The comments by Kotin, who has backed calls from Kyiv and western officials for the area to be demilitarised, came ahead of a briefing to the UN Security Council later on Tuesday by IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi, who led an inspection to the facility last week. The Zaporizhzhia plant, located outside the southern Ukrainian town of Energodar, is operated by Ukrainian employees overseen by Russian troops and representatives from Russian state-owned nuclear company Rosatom. But it has become a symbol of the wider risks of Russia’s war in Ukraine, now into its seventh month, given that this is the first time that an occupied nuclear power station has been at the centre of a war zone.