Kiev, Ukraine – While urging Kiev to hand out nuclear power plants in Washington, President Donald Trump may have forgotten one of the most frightening words that have come out of Ukraine.
Chernobyl, synonymous for the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
The 1986 explosion at the Soviet-Ukraine nuclear power plant at the time was hundreds of times more intense than the two atomic bombs that Washington dropped in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Chernobyl Blast rocked red-hot, highly irradiated graphite and dust, creating a section of “exclusion zone” around a shutdown plant that was not suitable for human habitation for tens of thousands of years.
Without the thousands of servicemen and paramedics who prevented the far larger reactors 4 in the reactor 4, where uranium fuel rods melted into giant “elephant feet,” most of Eastern Europe would have been uninhabited as well.
“For three months, I couldn’t stand up, I was barely able to eat,” one of the 69-year-old Voldi Mirrobovik told Al Jazeera earlier this month, explaining the health effects he suffered.
What did the US and Ukraine say?
During a phone conversation with Ukrainian President Voldy Mie Zelensky on Wednesday, Trump said the best way for Kiev to protect the four nuclear power plants is to pass them to the US.
“American ownership of these plants could be the best protection for its infrastructure,” Trump said.
Trump added that Washington is “very useful in running these plants with its electricity and utility expertise.”
Zelensky quickly revealed that he and Trump “talked only about one power plant under Russian occupation.”
He meant the Zaporidia plant in southeastern Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear facility that generated a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity.
Russia took it in 2022, and all six of its reactors were placed in “cold shutdowns” to stop energy production and reduce the risk of explosions.
However, Kiev has no intention of converting the Zaporidia plant into Washington.
“If they want to take it from the Russians, they want to invest in it and modernize it, that’s another matter,” Zelensky said at a press conference Thursday while visiting Norway. “We’re not talking about changes in ownership.”
What do Ukrainians fear?
Many Ukrainians believe that if Ukraine attempts to take over the plants after Trump’s proposal, there may be a risk of Russian provocation, such as an explosion.
“Of course there is such a risk,” Ihol Romanenko, deputy director of the Ukrainian military’s general staff, told Al Jazeera.
He compared the possibility to the June 2023 explosion that destroyed Nova Kakhovka Dam, which once provided a critical water supply to the Zaporizhzhia plant.
Kiev accused Moscow of blowing up the dam, calling it a “war crime” and an “ecocide.”
Romanenko said Trump has abused Ukraine’s miserable military and financial straits to take over the plants.
“Our memories work,” he said. “We remember everything that belongs to Ukraine and will fight for ours.”
However, former Zaporizhzhia factory staff reminded them of concerns about the possible provocation of Russia.
The former engineer who escaped the plant in 2023 but maintained a relationship with his former colleague doesn’t think the situation (the Russian) will resort to intentionally harming local parts.”
“The better it is, the higher the price they get when they are exchanging it for something — if they are exchanging it,” the engineer said on condition of anonymity.
What is the mood of Zaporizhzhia plants?
The engineer said his former colleague, who agreed to work with Rosatom, a nuclear monopoly managed by the Kremlin, which manages plants, was worried about Trump’s proposal.
However, after realising that Washington had not announced the use of military force to seize the factory, the collaborators felt happy.
“There are these mood swings,” the engineer said.
Rosatom has long pledged to relocate to Akyu’s nuclear power plant, which is being built in southeastern Turkiye, in the case Ukraine regenerates the Zaporidian plant.
And there is always a risk of negligence on the part of Russian soldiers protecting the plants.
In 2023, Al Jazeera released an exclusive report on ethnic Chechen security guards in Enerhodal, the company town of its factory.
They ignored safety measures and installed fences and machine guns inside the plant, which they viewed as “a large concrete construction that can be hidden behind,” said staff at the former factory.
If their negligence damages one of the reactors or spent fuel storage facilities, an explosion resembling a “dirty” atomic bomb could result, spitting radioactive clouds across Ukraine and parts of Eastern Europe, another staff member told Al Jazeera.
What is the role of nuclear power plants in Ukraine?
Before 2022, four nuclear power plants in Ukraine produced almost half of the country’s electricity.
Their role was particularly important after the loss of access to coal mines in southeastern Donbas.
Since 2022, Moscow has been shelling Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, and Putin has tentatively agreed to stop hitting it earlier this week.
Shortly after Trump’s idea was announced, Energy’s secretary Chris Wright told Fox News that his agency had “immense technical expertise” to run them.
“I don’t think I need boots on the ground,” he said.
Wright has an engineering and natural gas background. He may not be the best expert on how to operate nuclear reactors in the Soviet era.
They run on uranium rods made by Rosatom, but in 2005 Kiev chose to replace it with fuel from the Pittsburgh-based nuclear energy giant Westin House.
Seven years later, Westinghouse Fuel damaged protective envelopes at two reactors at the Southern Ukraine power plant.
Rosatom experts were called to remove the rod and urged Putin to announce that he had “solved a complex technical problem.”
Westinghouse redesigned the rod and no further incidents have been reported.
What are the broader concerns about plants?
International observers are also concerned about Ukraine’s aging reactors.
Bankwatch, a Prague-based environmental protection group, called them “zombie reactors” and urged Kiev to shut them down.
However, Petro Kochin, head of the Energy category, Ukraine’s nuclear energy monopoly, told Al Jazeera in 2021 that Bankwatch “manipulated the facts” and that his agency managed to extend the lifespan of the reactor.
There is also widespread concern about alleged corruption at Energoatom amidst the untransparent transactions and the procurement of cheap spare parts.
“They get crazy kickbacks. This is a team of marauders,” nuclear safety expert Olga Kosharna told Al Jazeera in 2021.
What if you say, “If you purchase the wrong spare parts, the equipment may be malfunctioning”? ” she said.