ENERHODAR, Ukraine – A spokesman for Europe’s largest nuclear plant says the facility is on fire after Russia attacked the power station in the southern Ukrainian city of Enerhodar.
A government official tells The Associated Press elevated levels of radiation are being detected near the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which provides about 25% of the country’s power generation.
“We demand that they stop the heavy weapons fire,” Andriy Tuz, spokesperson for the plant in Enerhodar, said in a video posted on Telegram. “There is a real threat of nuclear danger in the biggest atomic energy station in Europe.”
Tuz told Ukrainian television that it is urgent to stop the fighting to put out the flames.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information has not yet been publicly released.
The plant accounts for about one-quarter of Ukraine’s power generation.
The fighting at Enerhodar, a city on the Dnieper River that accounts for one-quarter of the country’s power generation, came as another round of talks between the two sides yielded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors inside Ukraine to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid.
The mayor of Enerhodar said Ukrainian forces were battling Russian troops on the city’s outskirts. Video showed flames and black smoke rising above the city of more than 50,000, with people streaming past wrecked cars, just a day after the U.N. atomic watchdog agency expressed grave concern that the fighting could cause accidental damage to Ukraine’s 15 nuclear reactors.