By Pavel Polityuk
KYIV, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Europe's largest nuclear power plant, seized by Russian forces in the early days of their invasion of Ukraine, can be restarted safely only if it is returned to Ukrainian control, the head of Ukraine's nuclear power operator said on Tuesday.
The six reactors at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant have been shut down since Russian forces captured the area. Moscow announced last year it was aiming to restart at least one reactor, and the plant's Russian-appointed boss said it could begin producing energy by 2027.
But Pavlo Kovtoniuk, boss of Ukrainian state nuclear firm Energoatom, said Russia lacks some equipment and spare parts to operate it, and risked a nuclear accident if it tries.
"Russia will not be able to launch the station. The main equipment and the control, protection and monitoring systems are all Ukrainian," Kovtoniuk said.
"This means that it's a Ukrainian project, and spare parts are manufactured at Ukrainian enterprises. Without spare parts and without the project, the station simply cannot be operated."
POWER STATION'S FATE CENTRAL TO PEACE TALKS
The fate of the station, which is capable of covering a third of Ukraine's electricity demand when fully operational, has been one of the key stumbling blocks in peace talks taking place between the warring countries under U.S. mediation.
Washington has proposed involving all three parties in running the plant and sharing the power. Moscow says that the territory where the station is located is now part of Russia, and the station belongs to Rosatom, its nuclear operator.
Rosatom did not respond to a request for comment on Kovtoniuk's remarks.
The plant mostly dates to the Soviet era, but Kovtoniuk said it was no longer fully compatible with technology used today in Russia.
In order to re-launch the station, Rosatom would have to replace American fuel used in the reactors, and completely change the power unit control system which is designed for use with this specific type of nuclear fuel. Rosatom has said it was ready to return the American fuel to the United States.
Kovtoniuk invoked the world's worst peacetime nuclear disaster - which took place 40 years ago in Chornobyl, Ukraine - to describe the risks from any Russian attempt to restart the plant without access to Ukrainian equipment and expertise.
"No one at the Chornobyl power plant deliberately wanted a disaster to happen. But this happened because the equipment was unable to operate in the conditions in which it found itself," he said. "The situation here is exactly the same."
He added that the available water reserves were not sufficient to cool even one reactor, after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in 2023 emptied out the Kakhovka reservoir, a vast man-made lake along which the plant sits.
(Reporting by Pavel PolityukEditing by Peter Graff)
