KYIV, Ukraine – In the winter darkness, rotations traced from Russian armored vehicles rushing past nuclear reactors and high-voltage power lines. A fire broke out. Shrapnel sprays a reactor vessel.
In the control room of Reactor 3, the operators were horrified.
“Cease fire on nuclear facilities,” one begged over the station’s loudspeaker. “You are endangering the safety of the whole world.”
Danger in Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – a series of cooling towers, nuclear reactors, engine rooms and radioactive waste storage areas – truly more astonishing than those who worked there knew at the time.
A large-caliber bullet penetrated the outer wall of Reactor 4, but the most disturbing and undisclosed at the time, a shell hit an electrical transformer at Reactor. 6, which was filled with flammable coolant, plant employees later inquired and told The New York Times. Both furnaces work.
Standing between the world and the nuclear disaster are Ukrainian workers, who have a deep understanding of the plant, having operated it for years with utmost precaution in a deserted corner of southern Ukraine, where the city is located. Streets and factories have lived in stable and predictable symbiosis before. The Russians have arrived.
Today, under Russian occupation, the factory’s employees are both hostages and essential workers – Ukrainian engineers tasked with averting disaster while working under the supervision of gunmen. Russian sniper.
The city around where they lived, Enerhodar, which translates as “gift of energy”, was under siege. About 100 factory workers were detained by Russian forces, according to Ukrainian officials and residents. Ten of them are still missing.
It depends on a boneless team of stressed, weary and scared workers to avert disaster.
“Imagine men and women coming to work and facing armed soldiers all around,” said Serhiy Shvets, a metalworking worker at a factory who was shot by Russian soldiers in his home. me in May, said. They searched for videos of people who protested in the first days of the war and saw his face.
Mr. Shvets, 53, managed to get out of the city and into Ukrainian-controlled territory, where he spoke from his hospital bed. He is concerned for the plant, the city and the world along with the Russian army currently located in the nuclear station.
Our Report on the Russo-Ukrainian War
“They’re like a monkey with a grenade, not really understanding the threat they’re posing,” he said.
Sleeping giant
Two months ago Invasion of RussiaEnerhodar celebrated a unique annual holiday for a community living in the shadow of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant: “Energy Engineer’s Day”.
There is dinner, music, dancing and fireworks. Olha, an engineer who attended the celebrations and fled the city in May, said: “It was mesmerizing and cool, but relayed communications from people inside.
Like other plant employees interviewed for this article, Olha will speak only on condition of anonymity out of fear for her safety.
In a city of 55,000 people, about 11,000 people worked at the factory. The city’s flag even features a bright sun in tribute to the energy it provides.
Work on Zaporizhzhia began in 1984. When the sixth reactor became operational in 1995, four years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s independence, the Ukrainian people celebrated Zaporizhzhia as an achievement.
It has become both a source of pride and a symbol of Ukrainian perseverance during the impoverished post-Soviet years and the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which occurred when a safety test Simulation of the effects of a power outage ended in what many consider to be the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
After Chernobyl, and after Ukraine’s independence, the authorities issued a brief moratorium on nuclear construction, but it wasn’t long before the country started with its nuclear ambitions. Today, Ukraine is second only to France rely on the reactor network to meet the electricity demand.
A unique achievement, the Zaporizhzhia site also has security holes.
The giant factory was conceived in the Soviet industrial design philosophy known as Gigantism, creating a panorama of industrial might, where much of what appears to be the inner workings of the house machine is exposed, making it particularly vulnerable to the conflict raging around it. .
From the opposite bank of the Kakhovka Reservoir, cooling towers, fume hoods and storage tanks appeared in the mist on a recent summer afternoon, contrasting with the rolling valley of sunflower fields and wheat as well as rolling hills along the Dnipro River.
Zaporizhzhia has its own radioactive waste storage system, established in 1999 with Western backing as a way to end Russia’s reliance on spent fuel recycling.
What we consider before using anonymous sources.
How do sources know the information? What is their motivation to tell us? Have they proven reliable in the past? Can we verify the information? Even if these questions are satisfied, The Times still uses anonymous sources as a last resort. Reporters and at least one editor know the source’s identity.
That storage poses a particularly pernicious danger today.
Due to the sensitive nature of the work, nuclear power plants are meant to adhere to the seven pillars of safety – ensuring the physical integrity of the plant, keeping safety systems fully operational. sufficient staff, maintain staff without undue stress, maintain reliable logistics lines, monitor onsite and offsite radiation, and maintain reliable communication with external regulatory authorities. outside.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, nearly all of those principles are now being violated.
“The main condition for operating a nuclear plant is calm,” said Dmytro Gortenko, a human resources manager who used to work in the plant’s management building. “You need to stay calm,” he continued. “Even how well things are going at home, in an employee’s home life. When a person is calm, he will make better decisions. In a state of stress or fear, a person will make mistakes.”
Mr. Gortenko worked at the plant for 21 years, going from engineer to engineer overseeing licensing of reactor operators. For him, like many others, the factory job was a family affair. His father is a security guard and his mother is a librarian for technical documents, and his wife holds the same position.
Cities and factories work in sync. There are regular safety drills at the plant and for people living and working nearby.
Mr. Gortenko and other employees ride the company bus to work, pass through the security checkpoint by swiping their cards and changing into uniforms – white for scientists, gray for supervisors, color blue or black for others. Workers have meals at the company cafeteria.
Each “block” or complex of reactors and engine rooms, he said, needs about 600 employees. They work in three eight-hour shifts, alternating from morning to evening to overnight, often scheduled months in advance.
Culture is one of vigilance and attention to detail, he said. Even minor accidents are meticulously recorded.
Like a sleeping giant, the factory and its dangerous reactors are undisturbed.
But the fact that the factory was occupied by Russian armed forces while fending off an outside rage was not the emergency they had anticipated.
Going down in chaos and fear
Mr. Gortenko was there on the night of March when Russian troops stormed the factory. When the shooting ended, he arrived to find half of the windows in his building had been shattered by shrapnel and gunshots.
An icy wind blew through the offices.
The workers glued plastic to the broken glass and continued their work. Russian soldiers, he said, appeared from time to time. At first, he didn’t see them threatening the workers, but they were armed.
By spring, however, employees had entered the plant under the supervision of Russian snipers, according to messages shared with The Times.
“Russian snipers take up positions on the roofs of the station buildings,” was the message sent to Olha, the engineer. “The staff are literally working.”
According to eyewitnesses and a Western official, an estimated 500 Russian soldiers were present at the plant. According to high-ranking Western officials, they are believed to be members of the Rosgvardiya, who are known for their brutality.
When they arrived, Russian soldiers tore up the town’s flag – along with the Ukrainian flag flying over City Hall – and placed in its place the tricolor Russian flag and the old Soviet hammer and sickle, according to citizen.
Residents say the Russians have been seen drinking, looting and detaining anyone for showing disapproval or even protest. Across town close to the company, people closed their doors at home as stories of missing friends multiplied.
“There was a case where a man was taken into the woods and they shot him close to him” during a mock execution, Mr. Gortenko said of a detainee’s ordeal he had heard from relatives. “They have a list of people.”
Olha, the engineer, said: “I personally know of a man who went missing in March, and there is no information about him. “Another man was taken to the commander’s office for questioning and beaten to death.”
After the young man was killed, the Russians called his mother and told her to come get his body, she said.
Repression has increased along with partisan resistance to the Russian occupation of the town, adding to the spiral of violence. On May 22, Andrii Shevchyk, whom the Russians had appointed mayor, wounded in a bomb attack outside his apartment.
The next day, Russian soldiers showed up at the door of Mr. Shvets, a metalworker, and shot him. Mr. Shvets said he was not involved in any organized insurgency but that he staffed barricades, along with hundreds of other factory workers, as the Russians approached the city.
Despite worries and fears for their families, employees at the nuclear plant are still busy working in the reactor control rooms, pumping stations and turbine compartments.
As the Russians tighten their grip on factories and cities, officials at Energoatom, the Ukrainian company overseeing 15 nuclear reactors of the nationhas made the decision to allow some non-essential employees to leave.
In April, the company also decided to distribute its entire stockpile of potassium iodide, a drug that can protect people from radiation-induced thyroid cancer.
Ukrainian authorities are also adjusting evacuation plans for about 400,000 people living in Ukrainian-controlled territories.
Combat has returned to the factory once again, with shells hitting the station area. The staff said that they often heard explosions.
On Monday, Ukrainian officials said that there was a return shelling near the plant and that one man was killed and several others injured when Russian soldiers opened fire on their vehicle at close range. .
The violence caused a desperate exodus of the people living there, and on whom the peaceful functioning of the factory depended.
“Many of those who are still working also want to leave,” Olha said.
Marc Santora reported from Kyiv, Ukraine and Andrew E. Kramer from Zaporizhzhia and Kyiv. Anna Lukinova contributed reporting from Kyiv and Yurii Shyvala from Zaporizhzhia.
