MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine on Thursday of trying to attack Russia’s Kursk nuclear power plant in a nighttime attack.
He provided no written evidence to support his claim and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Here are some details about the plant.
* The Kursk power plant is one of the most important nuclear power plants in Russia. It supplies about half of the electricity used in the Black Earth region of southern Russia.
* It is located on the Seym River near the town of Kurchatov, named after the Soviet nuclear physicist Igor Kurchatov, in the western Kursk region of Russia. Ukrainian forces launched a cross-border incursion into the Kursk region on August 6.
* The plant features four Soviet graphite-moderated RBMK-1000 reactors – the same design as those of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which became the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986, while still part of the Soviet Union. world.
* Reactor number 1, dating back to 1976, was closed at the Kursk plant in 2021 to operate in non-generation mode. Reactor number 2, which dates from 1979, was closed in 2024. Reactor number 3, from 1983, and reactor number 4, from 1985, are both operational.
* In 2018, construction of Kursk-2, essentially new reactors of the VVER-TOI type, started. The two reactors are not yet operational.
