Russian forces seize Ukraine nuclear power plant after shelling sets it on fire

The U.N. nuclear watchdog soon said the blaze had not affected “essential” equipment, and that Ukraine’s regulator reported no change in surrounding radiation levels. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tweeted that the Energy Department had also seen no elevated radiation readings.

“The plant’s reactors are protected by robust containment structures and reactors are being safely shut down,” Granholm said.

But the blaze still sparked international alarm, and underscored the perils of a war fought around nuclear sites. Ukrainian officials immediately raised the possibility of another disaster such as the deadly 1986 Chernobyl meltdown. The U.N.'s watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), had called an emergency meeting Wednesday as fighting closed in on the site in Enerhodar.

Before the Russian military takeover, a spokesman for the Zaporizhzhia plant said in an email that the site had been “under artillery fire” since 1:40 a.m. local time, and confirmed that fires had broken out. Only one of the plant’s six reactors was still generating power for the grid, the spokesman said. Before the Russian invasion, 15 reactors around Ukraine supplied half the country’s electricity.

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Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Russian forces had surrounded and fired on the Zaporizhzhia site. “Russians must IMMEDIATELY cease the fire, allow firefighters, establish a security zone!” he said on Twitter.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in a video message that an explosion at the plant could spell out the “end of Europe,” accusing Russian soldiers of shooting at the reactors purposefully.

During a Thursday news briefing, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the country was “taking every measure” to maintain the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant as well as the abandoned Chernobyl plant, which fell under Russian control last week. She also accused Ukraine of “intentionally destroying” infrastructure, Russian state media reported.

Mayor Dmitry Orlov of Enerhodar, where the plant is located, said just after 7 a.m. that the fire was out. Other Ukrainian authorities said a blaze in a training building at the plant was extinguished at 6:20 a.m., and that there were “no victims.” A regional military leader in Ukraine, Oleksandr Starukh, said on social media that the head of the plant “assured that the nuclear safety of the facility is ensured as of now” but added that the situation “remains extremely complicated.”

Ukrainian firefighters struggled to access the nuclear plant because of Russian shelling in the area, according to a senior Ukrainian government official.

Zelensky spoke by phone about the fire with President Biden and European Union officials, a Ukrainian official said. The White House confirmed the call. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also spoke with Zelensky, his office said.

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Jon B. Wolfsthal, a former adviser to Biden when he was vice president, said in an interview on Twitter that the reactor models built at the Zaporizhzhia plant were safer and better protected than the Chernobyl reactors.

“It’s not as dangerous as Chernobyl but tank fire and nuclear reactors are never a good combination,” he said. He said key questions were whether there was any damage to the water pumps used to cool the reactors, whether the connection to the grid had been cut and whether transmission lines were intact.

“War is unpredictable and can lead in different directions. And when you have nuclear powers at play it is even more unpredictable,” Wolfsthal said.

Gregory Jaczko, who served as the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under President Barack Obama, said if the fire reached an area with fuel, that could to lead to a “significant release” of radiation. Another pressing concern is making sure any of the radioactive spent fuel on the premises is kept cool, said Jaczko, who did not have direct knowledge of the situation.

James Acton, a physicist and co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said a worst-case scenario would be more akin to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, when a tsunami disabled the plant’s cooling system. “The reactors there just couldn’t cool themselves and it caused significant radioactive emissions,” he said.

If damage to the grid occurred, the reactors would have to fall back on diesel generators, which are not designed for use over the long term.

Approximately 1:30 a.m. local time on Friday, a live stream by the Zaporizhzhia plant, verified by The Washington Post, captured multiple bright white flashes that illuminated the area in front of the facility.

At least eight military vehicles were seen positioned on the main street leading directly to the plant. White and ashen-gray smoke clouded the soundless feed.

Ten minutes later, at 1:40 a.m., Enerhodar Mayor Orlov posted on his Telegram channel that the nuclear power plant was on fire. Video clips of the live stream posted as late as 11 p.m. showed an empty street — indicating that the vehicles had moved into the area before the flames.

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Over the next hour, more vehicles arrived, some driving outside the view of the camera, toward the rest of the plant. The view then pans right to show that a white building appears to be on fire, a bright blaze obscuring the entrance.

Shortly afterward, munitions were seen being fired across the screen, and two blasts appear to make contact — the latter striking the top of the building nearest the camera.

The attack came after a large crowd gathered Wednesday with Ukrainian flags, as well as barricades of cars, trucks, tires and sandbags, to block the road to Enerhodar from Russian troops.

“It is extremely important that the nuclear power plants are not put at risk in any way,” IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said earlier this week. He added that “an accident involving the nuclear facilities in Ukraine could have severe consequences for public health and the environment.”

Grossi said Wednesday at a news conference that two sites where radioactive materials are present had already been hit in the fighting. But the damage to those waste disposal facilities in Kyiv and Kharkiv did not lead to radioactive material being released, he said, though he was still concerned.

“One of the unique features of this situation is that this is an ongoing military conflict taking place in a country with a vast nuclear program,” Grossi told reporters in Vienna.

“There is a lot of nuclear material present,” he said. “You could have a situation where you have low-level waste, a release of radioactive material. What we have to ensure is that these things don’t happen.”

John Hudson, Doug MacMillan, Liz Sly, Dan Lamothe, Paul Sonne, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Atthar Mirza, Shane Harris, Amy Cheng and Maria Paul contributed to this report.