A Nuclear Power Plant on Ukraine’s Front Lines

[0] From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily.

[1] The Ukrainian military has begun a major offensive to drive the Russians from southern Ukraine.

[2] But directly in the path of the fighting is the country's largest nuclear power plant.

[3] My colleague, Mark Santora, on the world's race to save it.

[4] It's Wednesday, September 7th.

[5] So, Mark, our show hasn't been on the ground in Ukraine for a while.

[6] So I wanted to start with you by asking about the state of the war.

[7] You know, we talked about how the Russians started this big offensive in eastern Ukraine after having pulled out of Kiev and the West, but we haven't really talked much about where the war is since then.

[8] So catch us up.

[9] Where are we now?

[10] Right.

[11] So in June, Ukraine was sort of facing its darkest days.

[12] They were losing 100 to 200 soldiers every day.

[13] There was a point where they were basically at an ammunition.

[14] But then the Western weapons, which had been promised, started to show up on the scene.

[15] And these are long -range missiles and other weapon systems that allowed the Ukrainians basically to start to stabilize their defensive positions in the east.

[16] And as the summer progressed, they started to use those newly acquired Western long -range weapons to hit Russian positions deep behind enemy lines.

[17] And there is some urgency here for the Ukrainians.

[18] Winter is coming.

[19] Fighting gets harder.

[20] And also they have to maintain the support of the West because without the West and the Western weapons, they would not be able to really put up a fight.

[21] And essentially, as long as they're making progress and seems like they're winning, this is something that the West is willing to support.

[22] Yeah, and they have to show they can do more than defend at this point.

[23] What they've shown is a really tenacious ability to fight and defend, but they need to show that they can take back land.

[24] So in the past 10 days, they launched what is their most complex and ambitious counteroffensive since the early days of the war when they drove the Russians out of Kiev.

[25] And that is focused on southern Ukraine.

[26] And along the front lines of that counteroffensive is Europe's largest nuclear power plant, the Zaporizia nuclear power plant.

[27] Interesting.

[28] So tell me about this plant.

[29] So this is both Europe's and Ukraine's largest nuclear power plant.

[30] When it's fully operational, it can provide juice to some 4 million homes, which is like 20 % of the country's energy needs.

[31] And Ukraine is second only to France, I think, in terms of relying on nuclear power more than half of the country's energy is derived from nuclear power.

[32] So it's a vital piece of the country's energy grid.

[33] So how do we get to this point with the plant that is now squarely at the front lines of the war?

[34] So I think we have to go back to the first week of the war, really, when Russian forces swept north out of Crimea and they approached this nuclear power plant in town.

[35] The town is called Nahrir.

[36] And the town and the nuclear power plant really functioned in sync for years.

[37] There's some 50 ,000 people in the town, 11 ,000 work at the nuclear power plant.

[38] And the Ukrainians believe what the Russians want to do is disconnect that from the Ukrainian grid and then use that for their own grid.

[39] So this town had a vital piece of infrastructure for the Russians, it sounds like.

[40] Power.

[41] Yeah, exactly.

[42] Even the town's name and a hardier means the gift of energy.

[43] The town's flag has a sun on it.

[44] Wow.

[45] So as the Russians are barreling down on this town, the town's people, they band together and they build these massive barricades.

[46] They block the road with trucks.

[47] They burn tires.

[48] But they're no matter.

[49] for Russian tanks and armor.

[50] And the Russians basically break through the blockade, and then move on the nuclear power plant.

[51] There's a firefight outside the plant.

[52] We're sent a video from an engineer inside, basically getting on a loudspeaker in the control room and begging the Russians to stop firing, saying you're endangering the entire future of the planet here.

[53] You've got to stop shooting at the nuclear power plant.

[54] You know, you had this dramatic scene, and then the Russians basically established control over the plant itself.

[55] So after the Russians take control over the nuclear power plant, you have this really kind of weird situation.

[56] You have a Russian occupation force inside a working nuclear power plant still run by Ukrainian engineers reporting to a Ukrainian energy company.

[57] Wow, strange bedfellows.

[58] Yeah, and not necessarily what would be a conducive work environment.

[59] But for the first few weeks, at least, things seem to calm down a little.

[60] You know, the Russians in town start trying to what they call russify the population.

[61] They start to introduce the ruble.

[62] They start to introduce Russian banks and Russian pharmacies.

[63] They offer Russian passports.

[64] And then as spring approaches, we start to see tensions building.

[65] And by May 22nd, you have what is the Kremlin appointed mayor of this town, bombed and assassinated as he stood on his mother's porch.

[66] So the mayor that the Kremlin had installed was actually killed?

[67] Yeah, he was killed in a bombing, and we don't know for sure who did it, but we can make a good guess that it was Ukrainian partisans who are looking to undermine Russian occupation rule in towns like Anahardier and other occupied towns.

[68] I have to imagine that the Russians are pretty angry about this.

[69] Yeah, and so the day after this bombing, there is a...

[70] metal worker at the plant who's at his home.

[71] The Russians show up at his door and shoot him multiple times.

[72] There's actually audio released by the Ukrainian intelligence services of the Russians discussing shooting this guy Sergei Schfetz.

[73] The Russians say, yeah, we found his address, we went, and we shot him multiple times.

[74] And the more we interviewed people from the town, the more of these kind of stories we heard, one, an engineer named Ola, her neighbor's son, worked in the plant.

[75] He was taken in for questioning, and the next thing she heard was a call from the Russian authorities basically to go pick up his dead body.

[76] They had beaten him to death.

[77] Oh, God.

[78] So Ukrainian officials say in this one town alone, something like a thousand people have been brought in for questioning, and a good number of them remained missing, and a hundred of them worked at the plant itself.

[79] So it sounds like the Russians are really cracking down.

[80] in retaliation for the killing of their hand -picked mayor.

[81] But targeting and killing plant workers doesn't seem like a great idea if you're trying to keep the plant running properly, right?

[82] And presumably the ones that remain are pretty terrified.

[83] Yeah, I mean, I think every independent observer thinks this is madness.

[84] And we've seen a lot of plant workers flee and their families flee and you're left with something of a skeletal crew in some ways sort of manning this place.

[85] But these workers, they're basically hostages, but also essential workers, and they take pride in keeping this place running safely, and they know the consequences if they don't.

[86] But they're working under really unprecedented conditions.

[87] We've never seen anywhere in history a working nuclear power plant caught up in a situation like this.

[88] And so as summer progresses, more stories start to come out from engineers and others about the deteriorating working conditions in the plant, and you have international monitors trying to brooky, or some way to get some sort of, you know, eyes and ears, independent eyes and ears, inside the plant.

[89] You have, you know, UN monitors trying to get in there, trying to negotiate some deal, but at the same time, you have this sort of increase in the fighting as the Ukrainians start to hit the Russians deeper behind enemy lines, and you have this southern offensive just about to kick off.

[90] So you have this sort of intensified fighting going on around the plant, at the same time as you have conditions inside the plant getting worse.

[91] So as the Ukrainians start trying to reclaim some territory, which, as you said earlier, they need to do in order to keep getting support from the West, the fighting is getting closer and closer to this nuclear plant.

[92] Right.

[93] So as the fighting around the plant is intensifying, the Russians increasingly fortify the plant itself.

[94] They put snipers on the roof as employees come into work.

[95] Employees told us that they've placed mines around the perimeter of it, basically to keep it secure.

[96] So you have, you know, this plant itself is becoming a fortress.

[97] I mean, putting highly explosive weapons near a nuclear power plant doesn't seem like a good idea.

[98] Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely worrying.

[99] And then what we have happened is on August 5th, we have shells land inside the nuclear power plant itself.

[100] And who shelled it?

[101] So we just don't know the answer to this.

[102] The Russians blame the Ukrainians.

[103] The Ukrainians blame the Russians.

[104] And at this point, for observers worried about the safety of the planet, it really doesn't matter.

[105] The fact is the shelling of the plant is causing severe damaged and compromising critical systems.

[106] And Mark, what's the danger here?

[107] I mean, presumably it's that a shell will punch into a nuclear reactor or part of the plant and cause it to blow up?

[108] Like, what's the danger?

[109] The reactors themselves are built to withstand a plane crashing into them.

[110] They're really solid.

[111] sturdy, yeah.

[112] So the thing that the energy experts and monitors say worries them most, actually, is the plant's safe connection to external power.

[113] You never want a nuclear power plant to be without power.

[114] It's that simple.

[115] There's a lot of redundancies built in.

[116] So there's things that can flip on, particularly diesel generators as a last line of defense.

[117] So nuclear power plants are built to deal with a lot of situations.

[118] But again, we've never had a nuclear power plant in the middle of an active war zone.

[119] Got it.

[120] So it's all about keeping the power on at the plant.

[121] And if it goes off, there's a meltdown.

[122] Yeah.

[123] And what happens when a nuclear power plant actually fails?

[124] I mean, melts down.

[125] In my mind, of course, I'm thinking Chernobyl.

[126] So there's obviously all different levels of radiation leaks and meltdowns.

[127] The most severe, the worst disaster we've ever had is Chernobyl, which obviously here in Ukraine is a living memory for a lot of people in 1980.

[128] when the plant there melted down and you had several thousand people die, you had the release of radiation across a vast swath of the country and even across Europe, and you still have this exclusion zone of some 14 ,000 square miles where it's uninhabitable to this day.

[129] So that's your sort of worst -case scenario, a full -fledged meltdown.

[130] So coming into the present day with this power plant, the stakes are as high as they can get.

[131] Yeah.

[132] And as the days go by, there's repeated shelling.

[133] And then on August 25th, you have the worst fears of many people come true.

[134] All of the external power lines are severed and the plant is blacked out.

[135] We'll be right back.

[136] So Mark, you told us before the break that there was a blackout at the nuclear power plant in late August.

[137] You know, the thing that everybody was afraid of.

[138] What happened?

[139] Yeah, so just after midnight on the 25th, we had shelling that basically hit.

[140] something called the thermal power plant, which is next to the nuclear power plant and where a key reserve power line runs.

[141] You remember we talked before about how external power is sort of key to the safe operation of nuclear power plant.

[142] There are four high voltage cables that have all been damaged now by this point in the fighting.

[143] And on the 25th, we have this basically reserve line that's damaged both by shelling and fire.

[144] And that plunges the plant into a blackout for a period of time.

[145] But like we said before, nuclear power plants have a series of redundancies, and what happens then is the diesel generators kick on, allowing for the essential cooling systems to keep running.

[146] So what happens once these backup generators kick on?

[147] So basically at this point, what you have is a full -blown national emergency.

[148] You have engineers in the plant racing to restore these damaged lines and doing this while Russian soldiers are basically, you know, breathing down their Yeah, yeah.

[149] And you have the power plant disconnected from the Ukrainian grid, plunging hundreds of thousands of people in the region into darkness.

[150] There's no water, no power.

[151] So President Zelensky then...

[152] Ukrainians, Ukrainians, all Europeans.

[153] In his nightly address to the nation, he basically addresses it not just to the Ukrainian people, but to the people of Europe and around the world.

[154] And he says...

[155] Today, first in history, is uproiska Atomon Station.

[156] For the first time in history, the Zabarizian nuclear power plant has stopped.

[157] With President of the United States of America, Biden.

[158] He says, he spoke with President Biden and said, we need these international inspectors in there now.

[159] This situation is growing more dangerous by the minute, and we've come precariously close to disaster.

[160] He says every minute the Russian troops stay at the nuclear power plant.