The Russian shell that struck in the night had taken away the wall of a top-floor apartment, and in its place was just freezing air blowing off the Dnieper River – and a view of Europe’s biggest nuclear power station on the other bank.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant’s silhouette – with its two fat cooling towers and the row of six squat blocks – has become globally familiar since it was dubbed the most dangerous place on Earth: six nuclear reactors on the frontline of a catastrophic war.
On a fairly typical night last week, the Russians on the left bank of the river fired 40 shells and rockets into Nikopol, a town on the Ukrainian-held right bank, falling on its rows of krushchevky, five-storey blocks of flats built for factory workers in the 1960s and named after the Soviet leader of the time.
After 10 months of war, the blocks are half empty, so there are fewer people to kill. The only reported casualty on this particular night was a 65-year-old man who was taken to hospital, and whose flat now afforded such a comprehensive view of the power plant.
By the next morning, the repairs had already begun. An electrician restored power to the rest of the building, and two men were in the remains of the apartment itself, sweeping up and putting chipboard in place of absent walls.
There were four loud bangs as the Ukrainian army guns on the nearby riverbank opened fire on Russian positions and, a few minutes later, Nikopol’s air sirens sounded in anticipation of a Russian response, though none was forthcoming that morning.
The basements of the krushchevky have been turned into shelters with beds and school desks but most of the remaining population are so inured to bombardment, they just carry on with their day.
The Ukrainians insist they are extremely careful about what they shoot at, even when they receive fire from the vicinity of the Zaporizhzhia plant. On Thursday, the Ukrainian nuclear power company, Energoatom, accused Russia of bringing Grad multiple launch rocket systems near reactor number 6, which is near the area of where spent nuclear fuel is kept. The likely aim, Energoatom alleged, was to shell Nikopol and the nearby town of Marzanets, using their position as cover.
The walls of the reactors are thick enough to withstand artillery fire, but a direct hit on the spent fuel containers could well lead to the release of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Since seizing control of the power station in March, the Russians have begun building a concrete shelter over the spent fuel, but Ukrainian officials say it is being done without following the normal international safety protocols.
Earlier in the week, Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, accused Ukraine of “nuclear terrorism”, saying its armed forces had fired 33 large calibre shells at the Zaporizhzhia plant over the previous two weeks. The most recent report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has four inspectors at the Russian-occupied site, said last Friday there had been no shelling of the plant since 20 November, although artillery fire had landed in the vicinity.
Petro Kotin, Energoatom’s president, claims that the bombardments of the area around the nuclear reactors are false flag attacks carried out by Russian occupation forces.
“They have two special trucks, which we know have mortars inside, which go into the forest and each time they go there, there is shelling around the plant,” Kotin told the Guardian.
Dmytro Orlov, the mayor of Enerhodar, the town next to the nuclear plant that is home to its workers, claimed there was additional evidence that the shelling was coming from the Russian side. “You can hear the outgoing bang of the shooting and then the two or three seconds later the shell lands, so it is coming from very close and there aren’t any Ukrainian forces that close,” Orlov said in an interview on the Ukrainian side of the lines in the city of Zaporizhzhia where he continues his duties in exile.
“My personal opinion is that this is to scare the local population so the Russians can tell them: “You see – we’re protecting you and it’s the Ukrainians who are shelling you.”
It was not possible to verify Kotin and Orlov’s accounts of the shelling, or the counter-claims from Moscow. Satellite imagery however, has confirmed that the Russian army is storing military equipment inside the plant.
The IAEA inspectors on site could theoretically determine the trajectory of incoming rockets or shells but such detective work is not within their mandate. The agency is negotiating the creation of a security no-fire zone around the reactors, but Kyiv is insisting Russia must first withdraw all its weapons and armour from the power station, something Moscow has not so far agreed to.
Meanwhile there is a parallel safety threat from within the plant itself: the steady attrition of its workforce over the 10 months of the conflict. Many key workers have left because of the danger to their families or because they refused to work for the Russians. Of the 11,000-strong workforce before the full-scale invasion, just 4,000 are left. In an attempt to stop the exodus, the Russians have circulated lists of plant staff to all military checkpoints in the region with orders they are not be allowed to leave, but it has been too late to stop a major outflow.
“In some cases, there’s only three people to cover a seven or eight-person shift,” Orlov said. “People don’t have enough rest. It causes exhaustion.”
Operating under armed occupation adds to the stress. The workers still at the plant are under constant pressure to sign contracts with Rosatom, the Russian energy company, signifying acceptance of Moscow’s control.
“They take the workers aside one at a time, and the first question they ask is about the whereabouts of their families. They put pressure on through their family. One worker was questioned for eight hours,” Oleksii Melynchuk, a former worker at the nuclear power plant, said. Despite that pressure, he said, only about 10% of the staff at the plant have signed Rosatom contracts.
In recent days, the Russians have deactivated the electronic passes of some of the workers who have refused to sign, reducing the pool of available reactor operators even further.
Melynchuk said there were just enough staff left to maintain the plant in its current state of suspended animation, with all the reactors shut down, and two of them deliberately kept hot, to provide heating for Enerhodar.
But keeping reactors in this hot standby mode is a difficult and delicate process, adding to the burden on the operators. The situation could get worse still. The Zaporizhzhia plant is currently connected to the Ukrainian grid, but there have been times the transmission lines have been brought down by shelling, forcing the power station to fall back on diesel generators to keep the cooling system running and prevent the reactor vessel from meltdown.
If the connection to the grid was severed again, it would add to the pressure on the overstretched workforce and on the generators, which were only designed as a temporary backup. They will need maintenance and no one knows how much diesel fuel the plant has left. Once the diesel generators failed, meltdown would begin in a matter of hours.
“Those remaining at their posts are doing impossible things to keep the plant safe. They have proved their professionalism to the entire world,” Melynchuk said. “Even without the occupation, it would be very hard physically and psychologically to operate the station with the current staffing levels. But if you add the pressure from the occupiers, then it just gets harder.”
