Russian shelling has cut power to the site of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, part of which was destroyed in a 1986 nuclear meltdown, Ukraine’s energy ministry said.<\/p>\n
Ukraine said the confinement structure housing a damaged reactor lost power in the incident, and that specialists were currently working to restore electricity.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of posing a threat to global security.<\/p>\n
“Every day that Russia prolongs the war, refuses to implement a full and reliable ceasefire, and continues striking all objects of our energy infrastructure – including those critical to the safety of nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities – is a global threat,” Mr Zelensky said on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Ukraine did not elaborate on the consequences of the blackout, and Russia did not immediately comment.<\/p>\n
“Due to Russian shelling of energy infrastructure in the Kyiv region, an emergency situation arose at the facilities of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant,” Ukraine’s energy ministry said in a statement on Telegram.<\/p>\n
“As a result of power surges, the New Safe Confinement, a key facility that isolates the destroyed fourth power unit of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and prevents the release of radioactive materials into the environment, was left without power,” it added.<\/p>\n
The New Safe Confinement, completed in 2016, is a large shield-like structure that surrounds the unit four reactor and prevents the release of radioactive material.<\/p>\n
A Russian drone attack damaged the confinement structure in February, but did not result in increased radiation in the surrounding area, Ukrainian authorities said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian shelling has cut power to the site of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, part of which was destroyed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-55817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}