Zelenskyy: Russian attack caused a three-hour blackout at Chernobyl NPP facilities

Zelenskyy: Russian attack caused a three-hour blackout at Chernobyl NPP facilities

Due to a Russian strike on one of the energy substations in Slavutych, a blackout lasted for more than three hours at the facilities of the former Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

This was reported by the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“The Russians could not have been unaware that a strike on facilities in Slavutych would have such consequences for Chornobyl. This was a deliberate strike, in which they used more than 20 drones – according to preliminary assessments, Russian-Iranian ‘Shaheds.’ Some of these drones were shot down, but the strike was organized as a wave of drones to complicate the defense of the facility,” Zelenskyy emphasized.

He clarified that due to the Russian strike, power was cut off, in particular, to the new shelter that protects the surrounding environment from the remnants of the fourth reactor unit of the plant after the 1986 explosion, as well as from radioactive debris and dust.

“This is also a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, which holds 80% of all such spent fuel accumulated during the operation of the nuclear power plant. These are spent fuel assemblies with a total weight of over 3,250 tons,” the President noted.

He recalled that for the eighth day, a blackout has been ongoing at the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, which began due to Russian shelling, and the Russians are doing nothing to rectify the situation or allow Ukrainian specialists to restore external power to the ZNPP.