The Daily - A Nuclear Power Plant on Ukraine’s Front Lines

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

A counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces to try to drive Russian troops out of southern Ukraine has placed the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe, directly in the path of the fighting.As the world scrambles to prevent a catastrophe, the plant’s workers find themselves in a dangerously precarious position.Guest: Marc Santora, an international news editor for The New York Times, currently based in Kyiv. Background reading: Renewed shelling has put the Zaporizhzhia plant at risk despite the presence of U.N. monitors, underscoring what the International Atomic Energy Agency has called the “unprecedented” peril of the moment.The U.N. inspectors have called for a security protection zone around the plant. The risks are grave for all involved.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. The Ukrainian military has begun a major offensive to drive the Russians from southern Ukraine. But directly in the path of the fighting is the country's largest nuclear power plant. My colleague, Mark Santora, on the world's race to save it. It's Wednesday, September 7th. So Mark, our show hasn't been on the ground in Ukraine for a while. So I wanted to start with you by asking about the state of the war.

You know, we talked about how the Russians started this big offensive in eastern Ukraine after having pulled out of Kiev in the west, but we haven't really talked much about where the war is since then. So catch us up. Where are we now? Right. So in June, Ukraine was sort of facing its darkest days. They were losing 100 to 200 soldiers every day. There was a point where they were basically out of ammunition. But then the Western weapons, which had been promised, started to show up on the scene. 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. And as the summer progressed, they started to use those newly acquired Western long-range weapons

to hit Russian positions deep behind enemy lines. And there is some urgency here for the Ukrainians. Winter is coming, fighting gets harder, 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. And essentially, as long as they're making progress and it seems like they're winning, this is something that the West is willing to support. Yeah, and they have to show they can do more than defend at this point. What they've shown

is a really tenacious ability to fight and defend, but they need to show that they can take back land. 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. And that is focused on southern Ukraine. And along the front lines of that counteroffensive is Europe's largest nuclear power plant, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Interesting. So tell me about this plant. So this is both Europe's and Ukraine's largest nuclear power plant. When it's fully operational, it can provide juice to some 4 million homes, which is like 20 percent of the country's energy needs.

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. So it's a vital piece of the country's energy grid. So how do we get to this point with the plant that is now squarely at the front lines of the war? 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. The town is called Enahardir. And the town and the nuclear power plant really functioned in sync for years. There's some 50,000 people in the town, 11,000 work at the nuclear power plant.

And the Ukrainians believe what the Russians want to do is disconnect that from the Ukrainian grid and then use that power for their own grid. So this town had a vital piece of infrastructure for the Russians, it sounds like. Power. Yeah, exactly. Even the town's name, Anahardir, means the gift of energy. The town's flag has a sun on it. Wow.

So as the Russians are barreling down on this town, the townspeople, they band together and they build these massive barricades. They block the road with trucks, they burn tires, but they're no match for Russian tanks and armor. And the Russians basically break through the blockade and then move on the nuclear power plant. There's a firefight outside the plant. 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. You've got to stop shooting at the nuclear power plant. You know, you had this dramatic scene, and then the Russians basically established control over the planet itself. So after the Russians take control over the nuclear power plant, you have this really kind of weird situation.

You have a Russian occupation force inside a working nuclear power plant, you have this really kind of weird situation. You have a Russian occupation force inside a working nuclear power plant still run by Ukrainian engineers reporting to a Ukrainian energy company. Wow. Strange bedfellows. Yeah. And not necessarily what would be a conducive work environment. But for the first few weeks, at least, things seem to calm down a little. You know, the Russians in town start trying to what they call rucify the population. They start to introduce the ruble. They start to introduce Russian banks and Russian pharmacies. They offer Russian passports. And then as spring approaches, we start to see tensions building. 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. So the mayor that the Kremlin had installed was actually killed? 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 Anahardir and other occupied towns. I have to imagine that the Russians are pretty angry about this. Yeah. And so the day after this bombing, there is a metal worker at the plant who's at his home.

The Russians show up at his door and shoot him multiple times. There's actually audio released by the Ukrainian intelligence services of the Russians discussing shooting this guy Sergei Shvets. The Russians say, yeah, we found his address, we went and we shot him multiple times. 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. 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.

They had beaten him to death. Oh, God. 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 remain missing. And a hundred of them worked at the plant itself. So it sounds like the Russians

are really cracking down in retaliation for the killing of their handpicked mayor. But targeting and killing plant workers doesn't seem like a great idea if you're trying to keep the plant running properly, right? And presumably the ones that remain are pretty terrified. Yeah, I mean, I think every independent observer thinks this is madness. I think every independent observer thinks this is madness. 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. 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. But they're working under really unprecedented conditions. We've never seen anywhere in history a working nuclear power plant caught up in a situation like this. 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 broker some way to get some sort of, you know, eyes and ears, independent eyes and ears inside the plant.

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. 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. 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. Right. So as the fighting around the plant is intensifying,

the Russians increasingly fortify the plant itself. They put snipers on the roof as employees come into work. Employees told us that they've placed mines around the perimeter of it, basically to keep it secure. So you have, you know, this plant itself is becoming a fortress. I mean, putting highly explosive weapons near a nuclear power plant doesn't seem like a good idea. Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely worrying. And then what we have happen is on August 5th, we have shells land inside the nuclear power plant itself. And who shelled it? So we just don't know the answer to this.

The Russians blame the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians blame the Russians. And at this point, for observers worried about the safety of the plant, it really doesn't matter. The fact is the shelling of the plant is causing severe damage and compromising critical systems. And Mark, what's the danger here? 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. Like, what's the danger?

The reactors themselves are built to withstand a plane crashing into them. They're really solid and sturdy. So the thing that the energy experts and monitors say worries them most, actually, is the plant's safe connection to external power. You never want a nuclear power plant to be without power. It's that simple. There's a lot of redundancies built in. So there's things that can flip on, particularly diesel generators as a last line of defense.

So nuclear power plants are built to deal with a lot of situations. But again, we've never had a nuclear power plant in the to deal with a lot of situations. But again, we've never had a nuclear power plant in the middle of an active war zone. Got it. So it's all about keeping the power on at the plant. And if it goes off, there's a meltdown. Yeah. And what happens when a nuclear power plant actually fails? I mean, melts down? In my mind, of course, I'm thinking Chernobyl. So there's obviously all different levels of radiation leaks and meltdowns. 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 1986 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. So that's your sort of worst case scenario, a full-fledged meltdown. So coming into the present day with this power plant, the stakes are as high as they can get. Yeah, and as the days go by, there's repeated shelling. And then on August 25th,

you have the worst fears of many people come true. All of the external power lines are severed, and the plant is blacked out. We'll be right back. So, Mark, you told us before the break that there was a blackout at the nuclear power plant in late August. You know, the thing that everybody was afraid of. What happened? Yeah, so just after midnight on the 25th, we had shelling that basically hit something called the thermal power plant, which is next to the nuclear power plant and where a key reserve power line runs.

You remember we talked before about how external power is sort of key to the safe operation of a nuclear power plant. There are four high-voltage cables that have all been damaged now by this point in the fighting. And on the 25th, we have this basically reserve line that's damaged both by shelling and fire. And that plunges the plant into a blackout for a period of time. 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. So what happens once these backup generators kick on? So basically at this point, what you have is a full-blown national emergency. 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 necks. Yeah, yeah. And you have the power plant disconnected from the Ukrainian grid, plunging hundreds of thousands of people in the region into darkness. There's no water, no power. So President Zelensky then...

Ukrainians, Ukrainians, all Europeans. 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. And he says... For the first time in history, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has stopped. Сьогодні вперше в історії зупинилась Запорізька атомна станція. З президентом США Байденом. is growing more dangerous by the minute, and we've come precariously close to disaster. He says every minute the Russian troops stay at the nuclear power plant.

There's a risk of a global radiation disaster. So then what happens? So it takes the engineers basically 14 hours to reconnect the reactors to the Ukrainian power grid again. They get the reserve line fixed. So the plant is running basically using this one reserve line and the reactors are once again feeding power to the Ukrainian national power grid. Wow. So in the end, how close were they to a meltdown? I mean, again, we're somewhat in the dark here. The emergency generators did what they're supposed to do. There are something like 20 generators in the plant, and they should be able to keep the things

running indefinitely as long as they're supplied with diesel fuel. The problem is getting supplies across a war zone and a front line where there's active shelling and fighting all around. I think every nuclear expert I've spoken to said this is absolutely not the way you want to run a nuclear power plant. And every principle of the safe operation of a nuclear power plant is now being violated. So how does the international community respond to this? I mean, this call to action from Zelensky and this really scary thing that's happened at the plant. So at this point, the negotiations with the UN watchdogs really start to pick up. And one of the big sticking points is how do you get this team of monitors across an

active frontline war zone into this plant so they can get some independent insight into what's happening there? So you have this team of inspectors show up in Ukraine and they travel across the front line as shelling is still going off around them to the plant itself. And who are they, Mark? What are they trying to do? So it's a team of nuclear experts and scientists. They can't cast blame. They can't order the Russian military to leave. They're not there to decide who's doing the shelling. What they're there to do is try and figure out exactly the physical state of particularly the emergency power systems, and by their presence, perhaps,

sort of moderate the behavior of the actors, the warring parties. And what do they find once they're inside the plant? So, I mean, basically, they find a whole lot of problems. There are basically seven pillars that they say are needed to run a nuclear power plant safely. They have to do with the conditions of the workers, the ability of the plant to draw external power, the structural integrity of the facility. All of these seven pillars are being violated. these seven pillars are being violated. And so what they say, you know, given this situation,

the only solution to this urgent problem is the creation of a sort of safe zone around the plant. What that would look like and how they would do it since they have no authority to order the Russian soldiers to withdraw, I don't know. But what the UN does too is they leave two of these monitors at the plant, they say to keep a permanent presence, at the very least to allow for some independent insight into the conditions at the plant in real time. So leaving two UN workers, nuclear experts at the plant is effectively kind

of a security deposit that this plant is going to remain stable. Right. But even as you have the UN inspectors still there, on Monday, you had renewed shelling, a fire, disconnecting the plant from the Ukrainian power grid again. And then on Tuesday, you basically had the whole town of Enhardir lose power, lose water, massive shelling reported. So what difference ultimately having two people at the plant will make? It's hard to say. Right. The situation does not sound stable.

Right. And what are Ukrainians who live in this area doing? Well, they're obviously terrified. You have just on its face an active war, shelling, all the threats that come with war. Then on top of that, you have now this potential risk of a nuclear accident or disaster, which for people in Ukraine, you know, the memory of Chernobyl is still something raw and that many people experienced in their living lifetime. So you have this deep fear. And what they're doing then is they're

leaving. They're trying to get out. Again, it's not an easy thing to leave occupied Ukraine. There's a lot of checkpoints. Russians don't let everyone out. They're shelling along the road. It's dangerous. And then at the same time, the Ukrainian authorities are trying to do everything they can to prepare for a possible disaster.

And that includes trying to create evacuation routes for 400,000 people, including people living in occupied Ukraine. It includes giving iodine pills, which are basically meant to help prevent one type of radiation exposure. And they're essentially trying to put in place as many measures as they can to be ready should there be a disaster. So they're preparing for the worst. They're preparing for the worst. So they're preparing for the worst.

They're preparing for the worst. I think one of the nuclear engineers said to me, it's like Russian roulette. And the first time you pull the trigger, you get away with it. But each next time you pull that trigger, the odds of the gun going off increase. And this is the situation we have there. They've pulled the trigger. They've come close to disaster several times. And I think nobody wants to see what happens if the gun goes off.

Mark, thank you. Sabrina, thank you. As a first step, Russian and Ukrainian forces must commit not to engage in any military activity towards the plant site or from the plant site. On Tuesday afternoon, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Russia and Ukraine to stop all fighting near the Zaporizhia plant immediately. Operators at the plant must be able to carry out their responsibilities and communications must be maintained. Speaking to the 15-member Security Council, which includes Russia, he said that setting up a neutral safe zone around the plant was the only way to prevent further damage to it and avert a potential nuclear catastrophe.

Now is the time to urgently agree on concrete measures to ensure the safety of the area. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. The European Union will hold emergency talks this week to address the mounting energy crisis in countries across the continent. On Friday, Russia's state-run gas company, Gazprom, announced that it would not reopen the critical Nord Stream 1 pipeline, the latest move by Russia to cut off energy exports to Europe over the war in Ukraine.

The announcement sent European governments racing to contain energy prices, which have shot up in recent months since Russia began cutting off supplies. Natural gas prices in Europe are now 10 times higher than they were a year ago. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged $65 billion in relief measures. And the Swedish government said it would offer $23 billion to help energy companies which could otherwise soon go bankrupt. And in the Czech Republic, there were the first mass protests over energy costs,

with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets in Prague. And on Tuesday, a judge has ordered that a county commissioner in New Mexico be removed from office after he was convicted for participating in the January 6th riot at the Capitol. The judge ruled that Coy Griffin, a commissioner in New Mexico's Otero County, and the founder of a group called Cowboys for Trump, be removed from office under the 14th Amendment. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was adopted after the Civil War to punish members of the Confederacy for taking up arms against the Thank you. and Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.