A model map shows the countries in Europe that could be affected by a nuclear incident at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia power plant.
‘So far, we have been lucky. There has been no significant radiological release from Zaporizhzhia. But luck is not a strategy,’ he told Metro.co.uk.‘But you can really begin to write off a lot of economies and lives.’
Together with ‘inadequate’ staffing levels due to the war, this has ‘significantly increased the risk of a nuclear accident’ in a country already scarred by what happened at Chernobyl in 1986. ‘Reactors in operation need cooling. If the power goes down they don’t get the cooling. If heavens forbid they are hit, it’s a real nightmare scenario.
Dr Dorfman stressed the situation at Zaporizhzhia is not yet resolved, adding ‘knowing sod’s law, if something can go wrong, it probably will’.supports HTML5 videoHe said the much less defended Olympic-sized storage pools for spent fuel from the nuclear reactors, or otherwise known as ‘ponds’, still present a huge risk.