The mayor of the city, which is home to the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, issued a desperate statement after Russian soldiers took many employees hostage.
Yuri Fomichev, the mayor of Slavutych, contacted the Daily Mail to warn of a “total catastrophe” as they ran out of food and fuel, including for emergency generators providing backup control of the plant’s security systems, after a nearly three-year siege. weeks.
He said the city is facing a “humanitarian catastrophe” while mental stress on employees who are held at gunpoint to maintain operations risk “another crash.”
His concerns were echoed by the official in charge of the 19-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl, who warned that employees are “at the limit of their human capabilities due to physical and emotional exhaustion” as they work around the clock to protect public safety.
Mr. Fomichev framed his call as a series of text messages. His town of Slavutych, which was purpose-built for staff after the 1986 disaster left widespread pollution, is home to about 20,000 people.
On the first day of the invasion, it was captured by Russian military forces that crossed the nearby border with Belarus. They blew up a key access bridge, leaving the city behind the front lines.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which is currently guarded by Russian troops, and whose employees continue to monitor radiation levels and work at the nuclear power plant as usual.
Pictured: Ian Birrell for the Daily Mail in Pripyat near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
Mr. Fomichev said that dwindling electricity supplies are forcing families to cook on open fires in their yards as they use up rapidly dwindling reserves of heating fuel.
The Ukrainian national energy company Ukrenergo restored power to the area for the third time on Monday evening after Russian troops damaged a high-voltage power line. This left the city without electricity for the previous five days.
The decommissioned power plant, located about 60 miles north of Kyiv, has 20 tons of nuclear waste that must be constantly cooled to prevent evaporative radiation from escaping.
The mayor said that in the event of a power outage, “all safety systems are supported by generators that are also running out of fuel.”
He added eerily: “If the cooling systems stop, even for a while, we will have another Fukushima,” a reference to the 2011 Japanese nuclear disaster.
The mayor advocates the creation of a “humanitarian corridor” for the replacement and supply of personnel to the plant.
Pictured: Russian soldiers guard the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Pripyat, Ukraine, after taking over the facility on the first day of the Russian invasion twenty days ago.
He warned that the workers were “very tired – physically, mentally and psychologically.” They lose concentration, and this is very dangerous for nuclear power plants.”
Evgeniy Kramarenko, head of the Ukrainian agency managing the Exclusion Zone, said the 103 employees stranded in Chernobyl must be replaced every 24 hours.
Another 160 workers are stuck in Slavutych, but cannot take turns with colleagues at the plant.
Employees had to create sleeping quarters inside the nuclear plant using several cots, tables and floors, while splitting into shifts to ensure they rested.
The agency also lost contact on the second day of the war with critical sensors located in the Exclusion Zone.
“The latest data we received showed a 20-fold increase in radiation levels,” Mr. Kramarenko said.
Mayor advocates for “humanitarian corridor” to replace and supply personnel at the plant
He added that the increase could be due to the spread of radioactive dust from the unusual movement of people and vehicles in a polluted environment, but said there may be some problems that we are unable to detect and fix.
The security chief added that satellite imagery shows that several fires are raging in the area, which could be very dangerous if they spread to spent fuel storage facilities. “We are desperately calling for urgent action to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities.”
The mayor of Slavutych said that residents who participated in the cleanup of the consequences of the largest disaster in the history of nuclear energy, consider the current war “ten times worse and harder than the accident.”
Anna, 30, said fellow villagers resorted to bartering — even for medicine — after being cut off from the rest of Ukraine since February 24. “There’s no food in the shops – we’re almost out of everything.”
She said that some friends had been queuing for bread for seven hours. “I haven’t had bread since the beginning of the war.
Anna added that during this period, 15 children were born in the city, and the efforts of farmers to deliver milk stopped due to a lack of gasoline. “I can’t imagine what it’s like when a newborn doesn’t know if you can get food.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko said: “A nuclear war can start without launching nuclear missiles. If this happens, the whole of Europe will be forced to hide in shelters to escape radiation.”
Additional reporting by Katya Baklitskaya