Near the nuclear power plant that is held by Russia in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine has been practising its nuclear disaster response procedures.
The drills, according to the governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, which includes the facility, Yuriy Malashko, were created to coordinate the response of all services to a “emergency situation” at the plant.
It follows Kyiv’s accusation that Moscow was planning a “radiation catastrophe” by attacking the facility in a “terrorist” manner, a claim that Moscow has refuted.
Russia’s envoy to the UN Vassily Nebenzia wrote to the Security Council and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying: ‘We do not intend to blow up this NPP (nuclear power plant), we have no intention of doing so.’
Footage showed rescuers in yellow and white protective gear and gas masks, using dosimeters to check passenger cars and trucks for radiation levels and then cleaning wheels before vehicles underwent additional decontamination at specialised washing points.
A man on a stretcher was brought into a medical tent as sirens blared.
Tetyana, 45, said as she was checked for radiation as part of the drill: ‘Of course, it is scary. I fear for my family, my child. What do we do? It is very scary.’
Officials and civil defence forces worked on scenarios that might follow a nuclear disaster, and on how to inform and evacuate the population.
‘We have assumed the worst scenario, in which the contamination zone will be bigger than 50 kilometres,’ Yurii Vlasenko, a deputy energy minister, told reporters.
‘This would mean four regions would be affected.’
He said the results of the drill were good and Ukraine was ‘ready for the challenges’ Russia posed.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, has been occupied by Russia since early March last year, shortly after Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
Kyiv and Moscow have accused each other of shelling the vast complex ever since.
Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, suffered the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986 at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.