How to avoid the unthinkable when Europe’s largest nuclear power plant finds itself on the frontline of war? As UN inspectors prepare to visit Zaporizhzhia in the hopes of securing a facility hit by power outages and alleged attacks, we ask about accusations of Russian shelling from the compound, the risk of a Chernobyl-style meltdown and the toll it’s already taken on a complex that's now under Russian control but still operated by under-pressure Ukrainian staff.
The plant has a strategic location as Kyiv mounts launches a counter-offensive in the south and amid UN-led efforts to make Zaporizhzhia a demilitarised zone. More broadly, as Europe braces for a cold and expensive winter and as nuclear is touted as the carbon-free alternative to Russian natural gas, how does the fighting around Zaporizhzhia inform the decisions we take to ensure our energy security?
