The risk of a major disaster at the nearby Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant terrifies Nadiya Hez, who lives in an area that would probably take the brunt of any deadly radioactive fallout.
The nuclear plant has been in continual danger as Russian and Ukrainian troops trade fire in its vicinity, but the chance of a meltdown has increased sharply since the destruction of the Kakhovka dam just downstream. The June 6 breach unleashed a catastrophic flood and jeopardized the supply of water needed to cool the plant’s reactors and spent fuel.
But there have been so many horrors since Russia invaded last year that Hez and others in this Ukrainian town have responded to the threat of a nuclear disaster with a mix of dread and hardened fatalism.
Hez, who is a nurse, at least has iodine tablets on hand to mitigate the effects of radiation poisoning. After days of searching, she located a key to the root cellar outside their Soviet-era home that could serve as a crude fallout shelter for her, her husband and their 1-year-old son, Ihor, should radiation escape from the Russian-held nuclear power plant about 22 miles away. There has been little else to do except wait and focus on the daily hardships the war has already inflicted upon their lives.
“It’s horrible — I don’t even want to think about it,” Hez, 22, said while juggling her baby and several heavy water jugs from a charity’s roving tanker truck. The town’s municipal water system was knocked out when the dam went.
Warnings from Ukrainian officials and atomic energy experts about a potential disaster in southeastern Ukraine have gained urgency since the dam’s breach. Ukrainian officials accuse Russian forces of deliberately blowing up part of the dam, an allegation Moscow has denied.
