Fears of a nuclear disaster in Ukraine are growing every day as the country and its aggressor Russia, continue to engage in strikes around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia.
For the last two weeks, the power plant has been at grave risk as shelling around it continues. This has raised concern among the international community, United Nations nuclear watchdog IAEA has even warned of impending nuclear disaster and has called for a demilitarised zone.
NATO too has called for an urgent need to inspect the power plant.
For insights into the looming tragedy, WION spoke to senior journalist Mac William Bishop, who is currently situated near Mykolaiv, Ukraine. When asked about the present scenario around the Zaporizhzhia power plant, Bishop noted that the situation “isn’t clear” at this time.
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As per him “Russian military forces are in control of the nuclear power plant however the Ukrainian workers that operate the plant still continue to go to work, maintain the plant and ensure its safe operation.”
Bishop says that the situation isn’t that bad at the moment, but that there is a concern that “it could become quite bad, quite quickly”
Talking about the 1986 Chornobyl disaster, he said that Ukraine has been the scene of one of the worst nuclear accidents in human history, the fallout of which affected the whole of Europe and the site of which is still the scene of an exclusion zone “where people still can’t live and possibly won’t be able to for hundreds of years”.
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“There is a major concern obviously, when you talk about mixing nuclear reactors and high explosives, military grade weapons…the possibility that there could be a catastrophic failure is real and I think that is why so many actors in the international community are now concerned about what is happening in this location.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that the impending disaster would affect the whole of Europe and has requested international agencies to intervene.
In Bishop’s view “It has also been the strategy of the Ukrainian government to try to get more international actors involved in this conflict and so of course that is also part of the reason why they are reaching out to the IAEA and UN for assistance in dealing with this issue”
Following the plant’s strike in March, nuclear catastrophe was narrowly avoided. Fortunately, there was no radiation leak and there was no damage to the reactors. The plant has remained at the front lines of the Russia-Ukraine conflict ever since and the two nations continue to blame one another for the strike.
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Talking about the ongoing blame game between Russia and Ukraine and his thoughts on who actually shelled the plant Bishop remarked “If Russian troops are occupying this nuclear power plant it would make little sense for the Ukrainians to shell the facility in order to try and liberate it. Meanwhile, why the Russians would shell a facility that they are controlling also makes little sense from a strategic and tactical standpoint.”
He pointed out that “there is a very intensive propaganda, information war being conducted by both Ukraine and Russia, on social media platforms, through traditional news outlets,” and that “each side is working to shape the narrative to their advantage”
“We simply don’t have enough details about what exactly is happened or the nature of these shelling, the origin of it to make any kind of clear assessment at this point,” he added.
As per reports, on Thursday (August 18), United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Kyiv.
The question is: Will the upcoming visits by the heads of the UN and a possible visit by the IAEA chief have any impact or potentially calm things down?
“I think that is certainly the hope of any responsible party that’s looking at events around this nuclear power plant. Unfortunately, international organisations like the UN, they’ve not proven to be particularly affective in this conflict. But there are some signs of hope because there have been some isolated incidents in which the UN was able to achieve limited evacuations of non-combatants in key areas for example,” said Bishop.
Although demilitarising the area around the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia would resolve this immediate issue, it wouldn’t address the larger issues or the conflict, he said, adding that it is important to keep in mind that this is a critical situation.
“Threats of nuclear force, threats of nuclear terrorism, they have been a constant backdrop to this conflict and the only way to end that threat is to end the war, unfortunately that does not appear to be something that’s likely to happen in the next few months.”
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