Zaporizhzhia Ukraine S Largest Nuclear Power Plant Is Under Threat. But Experts Say A Chernobyl Sized Disaster Is Unlikely

“It’s not very likely that this plant will be destroyed,” Leon Cizelj, president of the European Nuclear Society, told CNN. “In the very unlikely event, the radioactive problem would mainly affect Ukrainians living nearby,” rather than spreading across eastern Europe as happened with Chernobyl, he said. “If we were to use past experience, Fukushima could be a worst-case comparison,” Cizelj added, referring to the severe but more localized meltdown at the Japanese plant in 2011. The most pressing risks would be faced by Ukrainians living nearby at the factory, which is located on the banks of the Dnipro River, south of the city of Zaporizhzhia, and by the Ukrainian staff still working there. See what you need to know about the clashes at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and what their effects might be.

What is happening at the Zaporizhzhia factory?

Fires at the Zaporizhzhia plant in recent weeks damaged a dry storage facility — where barrels of spent nuclear fuel are kept at the plant — as well as radiation monitoring detectors, according to Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-run nuclear power company. On August 5, several explosions near the electrical panel caused a power outage and a reactor was disconnected from the power grid, the head of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said. Rafael Mariano Grossi told the UN Security Council that the situation had deteriorated “to the point of being very worrying”. Kyiv has repeatedly accused Russian forces of stockpiling heavy weaponry inside the complex and using it as cover to launch attacks, knowing Ukraine cannot return fire without risking hitting one of the plant’s six reactors. Moscow, meanwhile, claimed that Ukrainian troops were targeting the site. Both sides tried to point the finger at the other for the threat of nuclear terrorism. Calls are mounting for an IAEA mission to be allowed to visit the complex. But the fighting continued despite the concern. On Tuesday, Ukrainian authorities said the city of Nikopoli, across the Dnipro River from the plant, came under fire again. “The shelling threatened the safety of operators working at the site and there were reports that one worker was hit by shrapnel and taken to hospital,” Henry Preston, director of communications at the London-based World Nuclear Association, told CNN. He called the occupation workers’ professionalism “remarkable” and the use of an operational power plant for military activities “unconscionable.”

Could Russia shut down the plant?

Ukraine’s state-run nuclear power company Energoatom claimed on Friday that Russian forces at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant “plan to shut down operational power units in the near future and disconnect them from communication lines that supply power to the Ukrainian electricity system ». “The plant is designed to be shut down and put into a cold state” if its operators decide to do so, Bob Kelly, former deputy director of the IAEA, told CNN. The Russians could alternatively “keep a unit running at partial power to power the plant itself.” Shutting down the plant will increase pressure on areas of southern Ukraine, which could be without power for the winter. But Kelley said it would be unlikely that Russia would abandon the plant entirely. “This was a war prize they wanted. It’s very valuable,” he said. Instead, Moscow is expected to divert electricity generated in Zaporizhzhia to Russian-held parts of Ukraine, which Russian officials have openly said they intend to do, although no timetable for such action has been announced. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that the electricity generated at the plant belongs to Ukraine. “Obviously, electricity from Zaporizhzhia is Ukrainian electricity and it is necessary — especially during the winter — for the Ukrainian people. And this principle must be fully respected,” Guterres said during a visit to the Ukrainian port of Odessa.

How safe are the plant’s nuclear reactors?

Modern nuclear power plants are extremely well reinforced to prevent damage from all kinds of attacks, such as earthquakes, and Zaporizhzhia is no exception. “Like all nuclear power plants, Zaporizhzhia contains a number of redundant safety systems, which under normal circumstances are extremely effective,” James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNN. “The problem is that nuclear power plants are not designed for war zones and, under reasonable conditions, all these systems could fail,” he added. The plant’s six reactors — only two of which are currently operational — are protected by meters-thick steel and concrete casing. “Random bombing can’t really destroy this, it would be really unlikely,” Cizelj said. If the reactors were attacked by deliberate, targeted bombing, the risk would increase — but even that would require a “very, very specialized” operation, he said. While Ukraine is not a member of the European Union, Cizelj told CNN he expects Zaporizhzhia’s precautions to be “comparable” to those in EU countries, where factories must adhere to strict nuclear safety rules.

What’s the worst case scenario?

Nuclear power plants use a number of auxiliary safety systems, such as diesel generators and external grid connections, to keep the reactors cool. Zaporizhzhia also uses a spray pond, a tank in which hot water from inside the plant is cooled. If these systems failed, then the nuclear reactor would heat up rapidly, causing a nuclear meltdown. That would be the worst-case scenario, experts said. But while it would be devastating locally, they explained, it would not have a significant impact on Europe more broadly. “The main risk here is damage to the systems needed to keep the fuel in the reactor cool — external feed lines, emergency diesel generators, equipment to dissipate heat from the reactor core,” Acton said. “In a war, repairing this equipment or implementing countermeasures could be impossible. In the worst case, the fuel could melt and release large amounts of radioactivity into the environment.” An attack on structures used to store spent nuclear fuel — fuel that is removed after being used in a reactor — also poses a risk, with the potential to release radioactive material into the surrounding area. But, experts said, it would not travel far. Energoatom chief Petro Kotin said a strike earlier in August was near the processed fuel storage facility. “This is very dangerous, because the missiles hit 10 to 20 meters away from the warehouse, but if they had hit the containers with the processed fuel, it would have been a radioactive accident,” Kotin told Ukrainian television. If one container is hit, “it will be a localized accident on the factory grounds and nearby area. If it’s two to three containers, the affected area will increase,” he added.

How does Zaporizhzhia differ from Chernobyl?

The shelling around Zaporizhia has prompted warnings of another “Chernobyl” — the world’s worst nuclear disaster. However, there are many differences between the two Ukrainian power plants and experts insist that a repeat of the 1986 flood is virtually impossible. The Chernobyl plant used Soviet-era RBMK reactors with medium graphite, which lacked a modern containment structure — a concrete and steel dome designed to prevent any release of radiation. Instead, each of the six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia facility are pressurized water reactors encased in a massive steel vessel, housed in a concrete building. The design is called VVER, the Russian acronym for water-water energy reactor. “The brakes on these types of reactors are much better,” Cizelj said. “If there was damage to these reactors, it would be much easier to shut them down.” The scale of a hypothetical nuclear meltdown would also be much smaller than Chernobyl, experts said. After the 1986 meltdown, radioactive fallout was scattered across much of the northern hemisphere, with about 150,000 square kilometers in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine contaminated, according to the IAEA. This contamination spread up to 500 kilometers north of the site. Instead, experts suggest that the worst-case scenario would look more like another, more recent disaster. “Fukushima is a better analogy than Chernobyl,” Acton said. “In this case, evacuations for tens of kilometers around the plant may be required, especially downwind. In the middle of a war these would be extremely dangerous.” Any radioactive fallout would spread about 10 or 20 kilometers from Zaporizhzhia before it would cease to pose serious health risks, experts suggest. “If someone was able to cause the reactors to melt down, (gases) could escape into the atmosphere and would travel with the wind until they were flushed out of the atmosphere,” Cizelj said. “With distance, the dilution happens — so very soon, the dilution becomes sufficient that the effects don’t become too severe for the environment and human health.” But for people living in war-torn southern Ukraine, a nuclear disaster is not the most immediate danger. “If you compare it to the other risks they face, this risk is not very big,” he added. CNN’s Eliza Mackintosh contributed reporting.

title: “Zaporizhzhia Ukraine S Largest Nuclear Power Plant Is Under Threat. But Experts Say A Chernobyl Sized Disaster Is Unlikely Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-05” author: “Jill Jeannotte”

“It’s not very likely that this plant will be destroyed,” Leon Cizelj, president of the European Nuclear Society, told CNN. “In the very unlikely event, the radioactive problem would mainly affect Ukrainians living nearby,” rather than spreading across eastern Europe as happened with Chernobyl, he said. “If we were to use past experience, Fukushima could be a worst-case comparison,” Cizelj added, referring to the severe but more localized meltdown at the Japanese plant in 2011. The most pressing risks would be faced by Ukrainians living nearby at the factory, which is located on the banks of the Dnipro River, south of the city of Zaporizhzhia, and by the Ukrainian staff still working there. See what you need to know about the clashes at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and what their effects might be.

What is happening at the Zaporizhzhia factory?

Fires at the Zaporizhzhia plant in recent weeks damaged a dry storage facility — where barrels of spent nuclear fuel are kept at the plant — as well as radiation monitoring detectors, according to Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-run nuclear power company. On August 5, several explosions near the electrical panel caused a power outage and a reactor was disconnected from the power grid, the head of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said. Rafael Mariano Grossi told the UN Security Council that the situation had deteriorated “to the point of being very worrying”. Kyiv has repeatedly accused Russian forces of stockpiling heavy weaponry inside the complex and using it as cover to launch attacks, knowing Ukraine cannot return fire without risking hitting one of the plant’s six reactors. Moscow, meanwhile, claimed that Ukrainian troops were targeting the site. Both sides tried to point the finger at the other for the threat of nuclear terrorism. Calls are mounting for an IAEA mission to be allowed to visit the complex. But the fighting continued despite the concern. On Tuesday, Ukrainian authorities said the city of Nikopoli, across the Dnipro River from the plant, came under fire again. “The shelling threatened the safety of operators working at the site and there were reports that one worker was hit by shrapnel and taken to hospital,” Henry Preston, director of communications at the London-based World Nuclear Association, told CNN. He called the occupation workers’ professionalism “remarkable” and the use of an operational power plant for military activities “unconscionable.”

Could Russia shut down the plant?

Ukraine’s state-run nuclear power company Energoatom claimed on Friday that Russian forces at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant “plan to shut down operational power units in the near future and disconnect them from communication lines that supply power to the Ukrainian electricity system ». “The plant is designed to be shut down and put into a cold state” if its operators decide to do so, Bob Kelly, former deputy director of the IAEA, told CNN. The Russians could alternatively “keep a unit running at partial power to power the plant itself.” Shutting down the plant will increase pressure on areas of southern Ukraine, which could be without power for the winter. But Kelley said it would be unlikely that Russia would abandon the plant entirely. “This was a war prize they wanted. It’s very valuable,” he said. Instead, Moscow is expected to divert electricity generated in Zaporizhzhia to Russian-held parts of Ukraine, which Russian officials have openly said they intend to do, although no timetable for such action has been announced. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that the electricity generated at the plant belongs to Ukraine. “Obviously, electricity from Zaporizhzhia is Ukrainian electricity and it is necessary — especially during the winter — for the Ukrainian people. And this principle must be fully respected,” Guterres said during a visit to the Ukrainian port of Odessa.

How safe are the plant’s nuclear reactors?

Modern nuclear power plants are extremely well reinforced to prevent damage from all kinds of attacks, such as earthquakes, and Zaporizhzhia is no exception. “Like all nuclear power plants, Zaporizhzhia contains a number of redundant safety systems, which under normal circumstances are extremely effective,” James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNN. “The problem is that nuclear power plants are not designed for war zones and, under reasonable conditions, all these systems could fail,” he added. The plant’s six reactors — only two of which are currently operational — are protected by meters-thick steel and concrete casing. “Random bombing can’t really destroy this, it would be really unlikely,” Cizelj said. If the reactors were attacked by deliberate, targeted bombing, the risk would increase — but even that would require a “very, very specialized” operation, he said. While Ukraine is not a member of the European Union, Cizelj told CNN he expects Zaporizhzhia’s precautions to be “comparable” to those in EU countries, where factories must adhere to strict nuclear safety rules.

What’s the worst case scenario?

Nuclear power plants use a number of auxiliary safety systems, such as diesel generators and external grid connections, to keep the reactors cool. Zaporizhzhia also uses a spray pond, a tank in which hot water from inside the plant is cooled. If these systems failed, then the nuclear reactor would heat up rapidly, causing a nuclear meltdown. That would be the worst-case scenario, experts said. But while it would be devastating locally, they explained, it would not have a significant impact on Europe more broadly. “The main risk here is damage to the systems needed to keep the fuel in the reactor cool — external feed lines, emergency diesel generators, equipment to dissipate heat from the reactor core,” Acton said. “In a war, repairing this equipment or implementing countermeasures could be impossible. In the worst case, the fuel could melt and release large amounts of radioactivity into the environment.” An attack on structures used to store spent nuclear fuel — fuel that is removed after being used in a reactor — also poses a risk, with the potential to release radioactive material into the surrounding area. But, experts said, it would not travel far. Energoatom chief Petro Kotin said a strike earlier in August was near the processed fuel storage facility. “This is very dangerous, because the missiles hit 10 to 20 meters away from the warehouse, but if they had hit the containers with the processed fuel, it would have been a radioactive accident,” Kotin told Ukrainian television. If one container is hit, “it will be a localized accident on the factory grounds and nearby area. If it’s two to three containers, the affected area will increase,” he added.

How does Zaporizhzhia differ from Chernobyl?

The shelling around Zaporizhia has prompted warnings of another “Chernobyl” — the world’s worst nuclear disaster. However, there are many differences between the two Ukrainian power plants and experts insist that a repeat of the 1986 flood is virtually impossible. The Chernobyl plant used Soviet-era RBMK reactors with medium graphite, which lacked a modern containment structure — a concrete and steel dome designed to prevent any release of radiation. Instead, each of the six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia facility are pressurized water reactors encased in a massive steel vessel, housed in a concrete building. The design is called VVER, the Russian acronym for water-water energy reactor. “The brakes on these types of reactors are much better,” Cizelj said. “If there was damage to these reactors, it would be much easier to shut them down.” The scale of a hypothetical nuclear meltdown would also be much smaller than Chernobyl, experts said. After the 1986 meltdown, radioactive fallout was scattered across much of the northern hemisphere, with about 150,000 square kilometers in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine contaminated, according to the IAEA. This contamination spread up to 500 kilometers north of the site. Instead, experts suggest that the worst-case scenario would look more like another, more recent disaster. “Fukushima is a better analogy than Chernobyl,” Acton said. “In this case, evacuations for tens of kilometers around the plant may be required, especially downwind. In the middle of a war these would be extremely dangerous.” Any radioactive fallout would spread about 10 or 20 kilometers from Zaporizhzhia before it would cease to pose serious health risks, experts suggest. “If someone was able to cause the reactors to melt down, (gases) could escape into the atmosphere and would travel with the wind until they were flushed out of the atmosphere,” Cizelj said. “With distance, the dilution happens — so very soon, the dilution becomes sufficient that the effects don’t become too severe for the environment and human health.” But for people living in war-torn southern Ukraine, a nuclear disaster is not the most immediate danger. “If you compare it to the other risks they face, this risk is not very big,” he added. CNN’s Eliza Mackintosh contributed reporting.

title: “Zaporizhzhia Ukraine S Largest Nuclear Power Plant Is Under Threat. But Experts Say A Chernobyl Sized Disaster Is Unlikely Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-10-29” author: “Adam Blanchard”

“It’s not very likely that this plant will be destroyed,” Leon Cizelj, president of the European Nuclear Society, told CNN. “In the very unlikely event, the radioactive problem would mainly affect Ukrainians living nearby,” rather than spreading across eastern Europe as happened with Chernobyl, he said. “If we were to use past experience, Fukushima could be a worst-case comparison,” Cizelj added, referring to the severe but more localized meltdown at the Japanese plant in 2011. The most pressing risks would be faced by Ukrainians living nearby at the factory, which is located on the banks of the Dnipro River, south of the city of Zaporizhzhia, and by the Ukrainian staff still working there. See what you need to know about the clashes at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and what their effects might be.

What is happening at the Zaporizhzhia factory?

Fires at the Zaporizhzhia plant in recent weeks damaged a dry storage facility — where barrels of spent nuclear fuel are kept at the plant — as well as radiation monitoring detectors, according to Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-run nuclear power company. On August 5, several explosions near the electrical panel caused a power outage and a reactor was disconnected from the power grid, the head of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said. Rafael Mariano Grossi told the UN Security Council that the situation had deteriorated “to the point of being very worrying”. Kyiv has repeatedly accused Russian forces of stockpiling heavy weaponry inside the complex and using it as cover to launch attacks, knowing Ukraine cannot return fire without risking hitting one of the plant’s six reactors. Moscow, meanwhile, claimed that Ukrainian troops were targeting the site. Both sides tried to point the finger at the other for the threat of nuclear terrorism. Calls are mounting for an IAEA mission to be allowed to visit the complex. But the fighting continued despite the concern. On Tuesday, Ukrainian authorities said the city of Nikopoli, across the Dnipro River from the plant, came under fire again. “The shelling threatened the safety of operators working at the site and there were reports that one worker was hit by shrapnel and taken to hospital,” Henry Preston, director of communications at the London-based World Nuclear Association, told CNN. He called the occupation workers’ professionalism “remarkable” and the use of an operational power plant for military activities “unconscionable.”

Could Russia shut down the plant?

Ukraine’s state-run nuclear power company Energoatom claimed on Friday that Russian forces at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant “plan to shut down operational power units in the near future and disconnect them from communication lines that supply power to the Ukrainian electricity system ». “The plant is designed to be shut down and put into a cold state” if its operators decide to do so, Bob Kelly, former deputy director of the IAEA, told CNN. The Russians could alternatively “keep a unit running at partial power to power the plant itself.” Shutting down the plant will increase pressure on areas of southern Ukraine, which could be without power for the winter. But Kelley said it would be unlikely that Russia would abandon the plant entirely. “This was a war prize they wanted. It’s very valuable,” he said. Instead, Moscow is expected to divert electricity generated in Zaporizhzhia to Russian-held parts of Ukraine, which Russian officials have openly said they intend to do, although no timetable for such action has been announced. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that the electricity generated at the plant belongs to Ukraine. “Obviously, electricity from Zaporizhzhia is Ukrainian electricity and it is necessary — especially during the winter — for the Ukrainian people. And this principle must be fully respected,” Guterres said during a visit to the Ukrainian port of Odessa.

How safe are the plant’s nuclear reactors?

Modern nuclear power plants are extremely well reinforced to prevent damage from all kinds of attacks, such as earthquakes, and Zaporizhzhia is no exception. “Like all nuclear power plants, Zaporizhzhia contains a number of redundant safety systems, which under normal circumstances are extremely effective,” James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNN. “The problem is that nuclear power plants are not designed for war zones and, under reasonable conditions, all these systems could fail,” he added. The plant’s six reactors — only two of which are currently operational — are protected by meters-thick steel and concrete casing. “Random bombing can’t really destroy this, it would be really unlikely,” Cizelj said. If the reactors were attacked by deliberate, targeted bombing, the risk would increase — but even that would require a “very, very specialized” operation, he said. While Ukraine is not a member of the European Union, Cizelj told CNN he expects Zaporizhzhia’s precautions to be “comparable” to those in EU countries, where factories must adhere to strict nuclear safety rules.

What’s the worst case scenario?

Nuclear power plants use a number of auxiliary safety systems, such as diesel generators and external grid connections, to keep the reactors cool. Zaporizhzhia also uses a spray pond, a tank in which hot water from inside the plant is cooled. If these systems failed, then the nuclear reactor would heat up rapidly, causing a nuclear meltdown. That would be the worst-case scenario, experts said. But while it would be devastating locally, they explained, it would not have a significant impact on Europe more broadly. “The main risk here is damage to the systems needed to keep the fuel in the reactor cool — external feed lines, emergency diesel generators, equipment to dissipate heat from the reactor core,” Acton said. “In a war, repairing this equipment or implementing countermeasures could be impossible. In the worst case, the fuel could melt and release large amounts of radioactivity into the environment.” An attack on structures used to store spent nuclear fuel — fuel that is removed after being used in a reactor — also poses a risk, with the potential to release radioactive material into the surrounding area. But, experts said, it would not travel far. Energoatom chief Petro Kotin said a strike earlier in August was near the processed fuel storage facility. “This is very dangerous, because the missiles hit 10 to 20 meters away from the warehouse, but if they had hit the containers with the processed fuel, it would have been a radioactive accident,” Kotin told Ukrainian television. If one container is hit, “it will be a localized accident on the factory grounds and nearby area. If it’s two to three containers, the affected area will increase,” he added.

How does Zaporizhzhia differ from Chernobyl?

The shelling around Zaporizhia has prompted warnings of another “Chernobyl” — the world’s worst nuclear disaster. However, there are many differences between the two Ukrainian power plants and experts insist that a repeat of the 1986 flood is virtually impossible. The Chernobyl plant used Soviet-era RBMK reactors with medium graphite, which lacked a modern containment structure — a concrete and steel dome designed to prevent any release of radiation. Instead, each of the six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia facility are pressurized water reactors encased in a massive steel vessel, housed in a concrete building. The design is called VVER, the Russian acronym for water-water energy reactor. “The brakes on these types of reactors are much better,” Cizelj said. “If there was damage to these reactors, it would be much easier to shut them down.” The scale of a hypothetical nuclear meltdown would also be much smaller than Chernobyl, experts said. After the 1986 meltdown, radioactive fallout was scattered across much of the northern hemisphere, with about 150,000 square kilometers in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine contaminated, according to the IAEA. This contamination spread up to 500 kilometers north of the site. Instead, experts suggest that the worst-case scenario would look more like another, more recent disaster. “Fukushima is a better analogy than Chernobyl,” Acton said. “In this case, evacuations for tens of kilometers around the plant may be required, especially downwind. In the middle of a war these would be extremely dangerous.” Any radioactive fallout would spread about 10 or 20 kilometers from Zaporizhzhia before it would cease to pose serious health risks, experts suggest. “If someone was able to cause the reactors to melt down, (gases) could escape into the atmosphere and would travel with the wind until they were flushed out of the atmosphere,” Cizelj said. “With distance, the dilution happens — so very soon, the dilution becomes sufficient that the effects don’t become too severe for the environment and human health.” But for people living in war-torn southern Ukraine, a nuclear disaster is not the most immediate danger. “If you compare it to the other risks they face, this risk is not very big,” he added. CNN’s Eliza Mackintosh contributed reporting.

title: “Zaporizhzhia Ukraine S Largest Nuclear Power Plant Is Under Threat. But Experts Say A Chernobyl Sized Disaster Is Unlikely Klmat” ShowToc: true date: “2022-10-22” author: “Robert Sharp”

“It’s not very likely that this plant will be destroyed,” Leon Cizelj, president of the European Nuclear Society, told CNN. “In the very unlikely event, the radioactive problem would mainly affect Ukrainians living nearby,” rather than spreading across eastern Europe as happened with Chernobyl, he said. “If we were to use past experience, Fukushima could be a worst-case comparison,” Cizelj added, referring to the severe but more localized meltdown at the Japanese plant in 2011. The most pressing risks would be faced by Ukrainians living nearby at the factory, which is located on the banks of the Dnipro River, south of the city of Zaporizhzhia, and by the Ukrainian staff still working there. See what you need to know about the clashes at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and what their effects might be.

What is happening at the Zaporizhzhia factory?

Fires at the Zaporizhzhia plant in recent weeks damaged a dry storage facility — where barrels of spent nuclear fuel are kept at the plant — as well as radiation monitoring detectors, according to Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-run nuclear power company. On August 5, several explosions near the electrical panel caused a power outage and a reactor was disconnected from the power grid, the head of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said. Rafael Mariano Grossi told the UN Security Council that the situation had deteriorated “to the point of being very worrying”. Kyiv has repeatedly accused Russian forces of stockpiling heavy weaponry inside the complex and using it as cover to launch attacks, knowing Ukraine cannot return fire without risking hitting one of the plant’s six reactors. Moscow, meanwhile, claimed that Ukrainian troops were targeting the site. Both sides tried to point the finger at the other for the threat of nuclear terrorism. Calls are mounting for an IAEA mission to be allowed to visit the complex. But the fighting continued despite the concern. On Tuesday, Ukrainian authorities said the city of Nikopoli, across the Dnipro River from the plant, came under fire again. “The shelling threatened the safety of operators working at the site and there were reports that one worker was hit by shrapnel and taken to hospital,” Henry Preston, director of communications at the London-based World Nuclear Association, told CNN. He called the occupation workers’ professionalism “remarkable” and the use of an operational power plant for military activities “unconscionable.”

Could Russia shut down the plant?

Ukraine’s state-run nuclear power company Energoatom claimed on Friday that Russian forces at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant “plan to shut down operational power units in the near future and disconnect them from communication lines that supply power to the Ukrainian electricity system ». “The plant is designed to be shut down and put into a cold state” if its operators decide to do so, Bob Kelly, former deputy director of the IAEA, told CNN. The Russians could alternatively “keep a unit running at partial power to power the plant itself.” Shutting down the plant will increase pressure on areas of southern Ukraine, which could be without power for the winter. But Kelley said it would be unlikely that Russia would abandon the plant entirely. “This was a war prize they wanted. It’s very valuable,” he said. Instead, Moscow is expected to divert electricity generated in Zaporizhzhia to Russian-held parts of Ukraine, which Russian officials have openly said they intend to do, although no timetable for such action has been announced. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that the electricity generated at the plant belongs to Ukraine. “Obviously, electricity from Zaporizhzhia is Ukrainian electricity and it is necessary — especially during the winter — for the Ukrainian people. And this principle must be fully respected,” Guterres said during a visit to the Ukrainian port of Odessa.

How safe are the plant’s nuclear reactors?

Modern nuclear power plants are extremely well reinforced to prevent damage from all kinds of attacks, such as earthquakes, and Zaporizhzhia is no exception. “Like all nuclear power plants, Zaporizhzhia contains a number of redundant safety systems, which under normal circumstances are extremely effective,” James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNN. “The problem is that nuclear power plants are not designed for war zones and, under reasonable conditions, all these systems could fail,” he added. The plant’s six reactors — only two of which are currently operational — are protected by meters-thick steel and concrete casing. “Random bombing can’t really destroy this, it would be really unlikely,” Cizelj said. If the reactors were attacked by deliberate, targeted bombing, the risk would increase — but even that would require a “very, very specialized” operation, he said. While Ukraine is not a member of the European Union, Cizelj told CNN he expects Zaporizhzhia’s precautions to be “comparable” to those in EU countries, where factories must adhere to strict nuclear safety rules.

What’s the worst case scenario?

Nuclear power plants use a number of auxiliary safety systems, such as diesel generators and external grid connections, to keep the reactors cool. Zaporizhzhia also uses a spray pond, a tank in which hot water from inside the plant is cooled. If these systems failed, then the nuclear reactor would heat up rapidly, causing a nuclear meltdown. That would be the worst-case scenario, experts said. But while it would be devastating locally, they explained, it would not have a significant impact on Europe more broadly. “The main risk here is damage to the systems needed to keep the fuel in the reactor cool — external feed lines, emergency diesel generators, equipment to dissipate heat from the reactor core,” Acton said. “In a war, repairing this equipment or implementing countermeasures could be impossible. In the worst case, the fuel could melt and release large amounts of radioactivity into the environment.” An attack on structures used to store spent nuclear fuel — fuel that is removed after being used in a reactor — also poses a risk, with the potential to release radioactive material into the surrounding area. But, experts said, it would not travel far. Energoatom chief Petro Kotin said a strike earlier in August was near the processed fuel storage facility. “This is very dangerous, because the missiles hit 10 to 20 meters away from the warehouse, but if they had hit the containers with the processed fuel, it would have been a radioactive accident,” Kotin told Ukrainian television. If one container is hit, “it will be a localized accident on the factory grounds and nearby area. If it’s two to three containers, the affected area will increase,” he added.

How does Zaporizhzhia differ from Chernobyl?

The shelling around Zaporizhia has prompted warnings of another “Chernobyl” — the world’s worst nuclear disaster. However, there are many differences between the two Ukrainian power plants and experts insist that a repeat of the 1986 flood is virtually impossible. The Chernobyl plant used Soviet-era RBMK reactors with medium graphite, which lacked a modern containment structure — a concrete and steel dome designed to prevent any release of radiation. Instead, each of the six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia facility are pressurized water reactors encased in a massive steel vessel, housed in a concrete building. The design is called VVER, the Russian acronym for water-water energy reactor. “The brakes on these types of reactors are much better,” Cizelj said. “If there was damage to these reactors, it would be much easier to shut them down.” The scale of a hypothetical nuclear meltdown would also be much smaller than Chernobyl, experts said. After the 1986 meltdown, radioactive fallout was scattered across much of the northern hemisphere, with about 150,000 square kilometers in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine contaminated, according to the IAEA. This contamination spread up to 500 kilometers north of the site. Instead, experts suggest that the worst-case scenario would look more like another, more recent disaster. “Fukushima is a better analogy than Chernobyl,” Acton said. “In this case, evacuations for tens of kilometers around the plant may be required, especially downwind. In the middle of a war these would be extremely dangerous.” Any radioactive fallout would spread about 10 or 20 kilometers from Zaporizhzhia before it would cease to pose serious health risks, experts suggest. “If someone was able to cause the reactors to melt down, (gases) could escape into the atmosphere and would travel with the wind until they were flushed out of the atmosphere,” Cizelj said. “With distance, the dilution happens — so very soon, the dilution becomes sufficient that the effects don’t become too severe for the environment and human health.” But for people living in war-torn southern Ukraine, a nuclear disaster is not the most immediate danger. “If you compare it to the other risks they face, this risk is not very big,” he added. CNN’s Eliza Mackintosh contributed reporting.