{"id":750,"date":"2025-03-21T08:54:01","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T08:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/03\/21\/does-trump-want-ukraines-nuclear-power-plants-what-has-kyiv-said-al-jazeera-english\/"},"modified":"2025-03-21T08:54:01","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T08:54:01","slug":"does-trump-want-ukraines-nuclear-power-plants-what-has-kyiv-said-al-jazeera-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/03\/21\/does-trump-want-ukraines-nuclear-power-plants-what-has-kyiv-said-al-jazeera-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Trump want Ukraine\u2019s nuclear power plants, what has Kyiv said? – Al Jazeera English"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013<\/strong> While urging Kyiv to give away its nuclear power plants to Washington, United States President Donald Trump may have forgotten one of the scariest words to ever come out of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Chernobyl, a synonym of the world\u2019s worst nuclear disaster.<\/p>\n

The 1986 explosion at the nuclear power plant in then-Soviet Ukraine was hundreds of times mightier than the two atomic bombs Washington dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.<\/p>\n

The Chernobyl blast rocketed red-hot, highly irradiated graphite and dust, making parts of the cordoned-off \u201cexclusion zone\u201d around the shutdown plant unfit for human habitation for tens of thousands of years.<\/p>\n

If it was not for thousands of servicemen and emergency workers who prevented a much bigger bang of Reactor Four, where uranium fuel rods melted into a giant \u201celephant foot\u201d, most of Eastern Europe would have been similarly uninhabitable.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor three months, I couldn\u2019t get up, I could barely eat,\u201d one of the workers, 69-year-old Volodymyr Robovyk, told Al Jazeera earlier this month, describing the health consequences he suffered.<\/p>\n

What have the US and Ukraine said?<\/h2>\n

During a phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, Trump said the best way for Kyiv to protect its four nuclear power plants is to give them away to the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican ownership of those plants could be the best protection for that infrastructure,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

Trump added that Washington could be \u201cvery helpful in running those plants with its electricity and utility expertise\u201d.<\/p>\n

Zelenskyy soon clarified that he and Trump \u201conly talked about one power plant that is under Russian occupation\u201d.<\/p>\n

He meant the Zaporizhzhia plant in southeastern Ukraine, Europe\u2019s largest nuclear facility that once generated a fifth of Ukraine\u2019s electricity.<\/p>\n

Russia occupied it in 2022, and all of its six reactors have been put into \u201ccold shutdown\u201d that stops energy generation and curbs the risk of an explosion.<\/p>\n

However, Kyiv is not going to turn the Zaporizhzhia plant over to Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they want to take it from the Russians, invest in it, modernise it, that\u2019s another matter,\u201d Zelenskyy told a news conference on Thursday while on a state visit to Norway. \u201cWe\u2019re not talking about the change of ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"INTERACTIVE
(Al Jazeera)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What do Ukrainians fear?<\/h2>\n

Many Ukrainians wonder whether there is any danger of a Russian provocation, such as an explosion if and when Ukraine tries to take over the plant after Trump\u2019s suggestion.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, there is such danger,\u201d Ihor Romanenko, who served as deputy head of Ukraine\u2019s general staff of armed forces, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

He compared the possibility to the June 2023 blast that destroyed<\/a> the Nova Kakhovka dam, which once provided a crucial water supply to the Zaporizhzhia plant.<\/p>\n

Kyiv accused Moscow of blowing up the dam, calling it a \u201cwar crime\u201d and \u201cecocide\u201d.<\/p>\n

Romanenko said Trump is abusing Ukraine\u2019s dire military and financial straits to take over the plant \u2013 and that Kyiv may sue Washington to get them back in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur memory works fine,\u201d he said. \u201cWe remember everything that belongs to Ukraine and will fight for what is ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, a former Zaporizhzhia plant staffer dissuaded his concerns about the possibility of a Russian provocation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that in this situation [the Russians] will resort to deliberately damaging the station\u2019s parts, because the station is a subject of negotiations and haggling,\u201d a former engineer who fled the plant in 2023, but still maintains ties with former colleagues, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe better its condition is the higher is the price they will get when they\u2019re swapping it for something \u2013 if they\u2019re swapping it,\u201d the engineer said on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the mood at the Zaporizhzhia plant?<\/h2>\n

The engineer said former colleagues who agreed to collaborate with Rosatom, the Kremlin-controlled nuclear monopoly that manages the plant, were worried about Trump\u2019s proposal.<\/p>\n

But after realising that Washington did not announce the use of its military force to retake the plant, the collaborators feel elated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are these mood swings,\u201d the engineer said.<\/p>\n

Rosatom has long pledged to relocate them to Russia or to the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant Russia is building in southeastern Turkiye in case Ukraine retakes the Zaporizhzhia plant.<\/p>\n

And there is always a risk of negligence on the part of Russian servicemen guarding the plant.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Al Jazeera published<\/a> an exclusive report about the ethnic Chechen guards in Enerhodar, the plant\u2019s company town.<\/p>\n

They ignored safety measures, installing fences and machineguns inside the plant and seeing it as a \u201cbig concrete construction one can hide behind\u201d, a former plant staffer said.<\/p>\n

If their negligence results in damage to one of the reactors or spent fuel storage facilities, an explosion similar to a \u201cdirty\u201d atomic bomb could occur \u2013 and spew a radioactive cloud over Ukraine and parts of Eastern Europe, another staffer told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the role of Ukraine\u2019s nuclear plants?<\/h2>\n

Before 2022, Ukraine\u2019s four nuclear power plants generated almost half of the nation\u2019s electricity.<\/p>\n

Their role was especially crucial after Kyiv lost access to coal mines in the southeastern Donbas region.<\/p>\n

Since 2022, Moscow has been shelling Ukraine\u2019s energy infrastructure, and Putin tentatively agreed to stop hitting it only earlier this week.<\/p>\n

Shortly after Trump\u2019s idea was announced, US Secretary for Energy Chris Wright told Fox News that his agency has \u201cimmense technical expertise\u201d to run them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that requires boots on the ground,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Wright has a background in engineering and natural gas. He may not be the best expert on how to operate Soviet-era reactors.<\/p>\n

They run on Rosatom-manufactured uranium rods, but in 2005, Kyiv chose to replace them with fuel from Westinghouse, a Pittsburg-based nuclear energy giant.<\/p>\n

Seven years later, Westinghouse fuel damaged protective envelopes in two reactors of the South Ukrainian power station.<\/p>\n

Rosatom experts were called in to remove the rods, prompting Putin to announce that they \u201csolved complex technical problems\u201d.<\/p>\n

Westinghouse redesigned the rods, and no further incidents were reported.<\/p>\n

What are the wider concerns about the plants?<\/h2>\n

International observers are also concerned about Ukraine\u2019s ageing reactors.<\/p>\n

Bankwatch, a Prague-based environmentalist group, called them \u201czombie reactors\u201d and urged Kyiv to shut them down.<\/p>\n

However, Petro Kotin, head of Energoatom, Ukraine\u2019s nuclear energy monopoly, told Al Jazeera in 2021 that Bankwatch \u201cmanipulated facts\u201d and that his agency succeeded in extending the reactors\u2019 lifespan.<\/p>\n

There are also widespread concerns about alleged corruption at Energoatom amid non-transparent deals and the procurement of cheap spare parts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey get crazy kickbacks. This is a team of marauders,\u201d Olga Kosharna, a nuclear safety expert, told Al Jazeera in 2021.<\/p>\n

What if there is \u201can equipment failure if you bought the wrong spare part?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013 While urging Kyiv to give away its nuclear power plants to Washington, United States President Donald Trump may have forgotten one of the scariest words to ever come out of Ukraine. Chernobyl, a synonym of the world\u2019s worst nuclear disaster. The 1986 explosion at the nuclear power plant in then-Soviet Ukraine was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}