Fears mount for safety of Ukraine’s nuclear reactors amid Russian invasion

Concerns are mounting about the safety of Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors and the possibility of an ecological disaster in the midst of the Russian invasion.

Experts said that those reactors, at four power plants around the country, had layers of safeguards to prevent a catastrophic meltdown of their cores, but in a full scale war of the kind Vladimir Putin has unleashed, there was a heightened risk of those safety layers all failing at once.

Radiation spikes were reported on Friday from Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster which has been overrun by Russian forces. The remains of the reactor core are buried under concrete and the plant is also a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel.

The Ukrainian ambassador to Washington Oksana Markarova said that responsibility for the plant, spelt Chornobyl in Ukrainian, now rested with Russia as strict regulations for the plant were not being observed. She accused the Russian forces of holding 92 plant personnel as hostages.

Ukraine's regulatory authority attributed the radiation spikes to military vehicles churning up top soil that is still contaminated by the 1986 reactor explosion.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the readings from Chernobyl remained low and did not pose a danger to the public, but added that the agency was closely monitoring Ukraine's reactors. It said the IAEA director general, Rafael Grossi "remained gravely concerned".

Six of Ukraine's reactors are at a nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia, the second biggest in Europe, which is close to where the Russians deployed thousands of troops in amphibious landings on Friday.