“Monkeys with a grenade”: inside the nuclear-power station on Ukraine’s front line

Former employees say the plant is being dangerously mismanaged by the Russians

Black & white photograph of the Zaporizhia nuclear power station with a yellow tinted overlay

By Wendell Steavenson

Boris loved his job working with technicians at the nuclear-power station in Zaporizhia. Born in 1968 in Poltava, a city in central Ukraine, he studied nuclear engineering at the university of Kharkiv before moving to Enerhodar, a city in the south of the country, built to house workers at the Zaporizhia power station. He joined the plant at an exciting time. “The field of nuclear energy stood for progress,” he said. “Something new.”

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