Fire and assault by Russian forces on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
Video analysis reveals Russian attack on Ukrainian nuclear plant veered near disaster
Last week's assault by Russian forces on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was far more dangerous than initial assessments suggested, according to an analysis by NPR of video and photographs of the attack and its aftermath.
A thorough review of a four-hour, 21-minute security camera video of the attack reveals that Russian forces repeatedly fired heavy weapons in the direction of the plant's massive reactor buildings, which housed dangerous nuclear fuel. Photos show that an administrative building directly in front of the reactor complex was shredded by Russian fire. And a video from inside the plant shows damage and a possible Russian shell that landed less than 250 feet from the Unit 2 reactor building.
The security camera footage also shows Russian troops haphazardly firing rocket-propelled grenades into the main administrative building at the plant and turning away Ukrainian firefighters even as a fire raged out of control in a nearby training building.
Photos show heavy damage to an office at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Using buildings visible outside the window, NPR was able to verify the location as the main administrative building at the front of the facility. - Energoatom
The evidence stands in stark contrast to early comments by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which while acknowledging the seriousness of the assault, emphasized that the action took place away from the reactors. In a news conference immediately after the attack, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi made reference to only a single projectile hitting a training building adjacent to the reactor complex.
"All the safety systems of the six reactors at the plant were not affected at all," Grossi told reporters at the March 4 briefing.
In fact, the training building took multiple strikes, and it was hardly the only part of the site to take fire from Russian forces. The security footage supports claims by Ukraine's nuclear regulator of damage at three other locations: the Unit 1 reactor building, the transformer at the Unit 6 reactor and the spent fuel pad, which is used to store nuclear waste. It also shows ordnance striking a high-voltage line outside the plant. The IAEA says two such lines were damaged in the attack.
"This video is very disturbing," says Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. While the types of reactors used at the plant are far safer than the one that exploded in Chernobyl in 1986, the Russian attack could have triggered a meltdown similar to the kind that struck Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, he warns.
"It's completely insane to subject a nuclear plant to this kind of an assault," Lyman says ... >>>>>>
Continue Watching Video Documents and Reading More The Dossier On The Original Source >>>
