Fire broke out at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant after the facility in the country’s southeast endured heavy shelling from Russian troops Friday morning, Ukraine’s foreign minister said.
“Russian army is firing from all sides upon Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe,” the foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said on Twitter. “Fire has already broke out.”
Kuleba added that if the plant, which holds six of the country’s 15 reactors, explodes, it will be far worse than the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
In a video posted on Telegram, Andriy Tuz, a facility spokesperson, demanded that Russia stop shelling the plant and said there was a “real threat of nuclear danger,” according to the Associated Press.
Speaking on local television, Tuz said that shells had set fire to one of the facility’s six reactors, the AP reported. The unit is under renovation but has nuclear fuel inside and had been inaccessible to firefighters because they were being shot at, Tuz said, the AP reported.
The country’s emergency services department later said there was a fire in a training building behind the plant, and the International Atomic Energy Agency said no “essential” equipment had been damaged.
The agency added that there was no change in radiation levels at the site.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke with President Joe Biden and European leaders about what he described in a Telegram post as the potential “nuclear catastrophe” that the shelling could unleash.
“If there is an explosion it is the end for all of us,” he said. “The end of Europe. ”
In a summary of their call released by the White House, Biden urged “Russia to cease its military activities in the area and allow firefighters and emergency responders to access the site.”
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