Russia: Workers in Zaporizhzhia plant have issued warning over threat of nuclear disaster

The collapse of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine made Tory politicians doubtwhether the West underestimates Vladimir Putin’s readiness to do whatever it takes to gain control over its neighbour.

Ukrainian military chiefs blamed the destruction of the dam on the Kremlin and expressed their fear that the flood would inhibit water from getting to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant which it uses for cooling.

But the state of the Kakhovka dam is not the only threat Europe’s largest nuclear power plan - and with it, the whole population of Europe - is facing.

Technicians working at the site leaked a terrifying warning.

They said that Moscow is increasingly using the Zaporizhzhia plant for military purposes, hiding armour, ammunition and guns around it, creating a risk of explosion. Meanwhile, there is not enough staff to service the huge site.

The technicians fear that it creates a threat of a nuclear catastrophe ‘much worse than Fukushima and worse than Chernobyl’.

Zaporizhzhia plant technicians fear nuclear devastation

Russia took control over the Zaporizhzhia power plant, Europe’s biggest site of this kind, in March last year. Although they insist that Vladimir Putin’s forces did it to keep it safe and that it was being properly maintained, the concerns over the threats it creates have been mounting in the coming months.

Sky News spoke to two technicians from the plant, who have kept their identity anonymous.

Although they said the staff were ‘held at gunpoint’ most of the time and that by speaking to the press they were risking ‘torture, imprisonment, or worse’, they still wanted to be heard.

Both workers issued a terrifying warning that sent chills across the world.

There is a growing threat of a nuclear disaster that could cause devastation across much of Europe, Russia and the Mediterranean.

One of the technicians said:

The level of radioactive pollution, and most importantly the area of contamination, will be thousands of square kilometres of land and sea… it would be much, much worse than Fukushima and worse than Chornobyl.

Nuclear experts don't have a consensus on how grave the threat of a nuclear catastrophe is.

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What are the main threats to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant?

Technicians insist that the nuclear plant is not being properly maintained and that the weapons stored there and the constant shelling are enough to cause irreversible consequences.

Since Russian forces occupied the site last year, Ukrainesuffered seven power outages - with the country’s officials calling them a deliberate move to ‘bleed’ the population of the possibility to live their daily lives.

The insiders also reported staff shortages. According to them, it went down from 11,000 to few than 3,500 workers.

They said:

The quality of the workers is lower because the qualified staff left. So generally the situation here is deteriorating.

The technicians have also pointed at an increased level of military activity around the site in the last few weeks as they witnessed Russian forces moving more armour, ammunition and guns to the place they believe won’t be targeted by the Ukrainian armed forces.

One of the workers said:

The thing is, one month and a half ago there were two times less troops on the power station and now there are two times more which means they are definitely preparing for the counteroffensive.

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Sources used:

- Sky News: 'Ukraine war: Workers at deteriorating Zaporizhzhia plant fear 'devastation' on a scale 'worse than Chernobyl''