The AP Interview: Ukraine aims to restart occupied reactors

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine is considering restarting Europe’s largest nuclear plant to ensure its safety just weeks after fears of a radiation disaster at the Russian-occupied facility, the president of the company that operates the plant said Tuesday.

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has emerged as one of the most worrying flashpoints of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has been damaged in fighting, prompting international alarm, and its head was detained by occupying forces through the weekend before his release Monday.

Ukrainian state nuclear company Energoatom shut down the last of the plant’s six reactors on Sept. 11 because Russian military activity had cut reliable external power supplies for cooling and other safety systems, threatening a potentially catastrophic meltdown.

But now the company faces a different problem.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Energoatom President Petro Kotin said the company could restart two of the reactors in a matter of days to protect safety installations as winter approaches and temperatures drop.

“If you have low temperature, you will just freeze everything inside. The safety equipment will be damaged,” he said in his office at the company’s Kyiv headquarters. “So you need heating and the only heating is going to come from the working reactor.”

The plant’s last operational reactor was placed into what is known as “cold shutdown” last month, reducing the likelihood of a dangerous meltdown.

But there is still a risk as long as there are nuclear fuel assemblies inside, Kotin explained. Intentional damage to the reactors or the safety and cooling equipment, or a failure of those systems due to cold temperatures, could still lead to disaster.

“You have residual heat and you should constantly provide the coolant for...