JAKARTA - Russia risks causing nuclear and radioactive disasters by launching attacks, resulting in all Ukraine's nuclear power plants being cut off from the power grid for the first time in 40 years, Ukraine's nuclear energy chief said Thursday.
Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that three nuclear power plants in the territory controlled by Ukrainian forces were out, following the latest wave of Russian missile attacks at Ukraine's energy facility.
Petro Kotin, head of the Energoatom nuclear power company, said the vast nuclear power plant in the Zaporizhia region of southern Ukraine, which has not operated since September, had also been cut off from the grid on Wednesday and relies on backup diesel generators.
He added that PLTN Zaporizhia, which has been occupied by Russian troops since it invaded Ukraine nine months ago, had been reconnected to the network on Thursday morning and the backup generator was turned off.
"There is a real danger of nuclear disaster and radiation caused by firing across Ukraine with Russian cruise and ballistic missiles, and a huge risk of damage to nuclear plants," he said in a written statement.
"Russia must be responsible for this embarrassing crime," he stressed.
It is known, both Russia and Ukraine blame each other for the shooting of the Zaporizhzhia PLTN complex.
Meanwhile, Energy Minister German Galushchenko said the Rivne, Pivdennoukrainsk and Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plants were expected to resume operations on Thursday evening, after units there were shut down on Wednesday due to Russian attacks.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly warned about a new nuclear disaster, after previously the world's worst nuclear crash occurred in the country, to be precise at PLTN Chornobyl in 1986.
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