
Russia's Nuclear Threats: In Wartime, How Safe Are Ukraine's Nuclear Power Plants?
When Russian troops rolled into Ukraine, they occupied the Chernobyl exclusion zone within days and, weeks later, seized the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe's largest nuclear facility. Director Pavlo Cherepin, who grew up hearing the word 'evacuation' after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, follows three Ukrainian nuclear plant employees living under occupation, describing fear, illegal interrogations, and torture. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi appears throughout, warning that staff working conditions, not just the reactors themselves, are the agency's biggest concern as the plant loses power, catches fire, and comes under repeated shelling. The film moves between plant floors, interviews with workers who stayed on the job under armed guard, and the diplomatic scramble to get inspectors inside. It lays out plainly what a meltdown at an active war-zone reactor could mean for a country that gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994 in exchange for security guarantees that did not hold.