- Russia captured six of Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors when it took control of Zaporizhzhia on Friday.
- Ukrainian officials issued dire warnings about fighting near them, though experts were skeptical.
- Insider's map shows the location of all the active reactors, which seem to be priority targets.
Russia captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by force on Friday, sparking some concern about the safety of the reactors in a war zone.
Altogether, there are 15 active reactors in Ukraine spread out across four power stations, as can be seen on the map above. This is how they are distributed:
- Zaporizhzhia: six reactors.
- Yuzhnoukrainsk: three reactors.
- Rivne: four reactors.
- Khmelnytskyi: two reactors.
All except Zaporizhzhia remained under Ukraine's control as of Friday evening local time.
It is not clear whether Russia aims to capture the remaining nuclear power stations. Other power facilities appear to have been targeted in the war, including the Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric plant in southern Ukraine and a second hydroelectric plant north of Kyiv.
According to a UK intelligence assessment of Russian troop locations as of Friday, soldiers were still relatively far from the other facilities.
—Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) March 4, 2022
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's independent nuclear watchdog, condemned the fighting that happened near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant reactors.
The agency warned of "severe danger if any reactors were hit" in a statement Friday.
A fire broke out on the site when a projectile — which is thought to have originated from the Russian side, per the IAEA — struck a training center less than 400 years away from the six reactors on the power plant.
In an ominous message released on Facebook on Friday Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky also gave a stark warning, though experts said he was overstating the risk.
"There are 15 nuclear reactors in Ukraine. If one of them blows, that's the end for everyone, that's the end of Europe," he wrote.
Experts have said, however, that although this power plant is not built to specifically withstand the impact of artillery weapons, nearby fighting is unlikely to accidentally lead to a disaster.
Insider previously reported that the reactors are built robustly and have many safety features meant to prevent accidents like the infamous 1986 meltdown in Chernobyl in the north of Ukraine, where there are no longer any working reactors.
Russian troops took control of the remnants of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the first days of the war, but monitors there found no significant changes in the level of radiation.
Zaporizhzhia is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and the ninth-largest in the world, per The Guardian. It supplies about a fifth of Ukraine's energy, The Guardian reported.
According to the IAEA, Zaporizhzhia was on Friday still being operated by its regular staff while under Russian military control and there had been no release of radioactive material.