The chance of a serious disaster at the Russian-occupied nuclear power plant in Ukraine has risen to one in five, a leading engineer at the Soviet-era facility has warned.
A recent exodus of top staff and the power station’s use as a military base by Chechen troops are among the reasons why a “Fukushima scenario” could happen at any time, according to one of the ten most senior engineers at the plant near Zaporizhzhia, which had a prewar workforce of 11,000.
The shortage of expertise is so acute that janitors, secretaries and “blue-collar” workers are posing as engineers in lab coats to dupe international observers into believing that the Russians have the necessary staff to avert disaster, according to sources with knowledge of conditions inside the facility.
