The enormous plant – which we’ve been asked not to name for security reasons – has been reduced to a pile of twisted metal and broken pipes, its turbines buried in rubble, taking the site completely off line.
Volodymyr Kovalenko was on duty in the control room keeping the plant working when the missiles hit at 3am.
“It was a very powerful attack. We’d never experienced anything like it. We’d had strikes before – part of the roof had collapsed, it was pretty grim. But this time it was particularly severe.”
Kovalenko, who followed in his parents’ footsteps and has worked at the site for 25 years, says the damage is heartbreaking, though he’s confident it can be repaired.
But the work is being hampered by air raids every 15-30 minutes – seven times during our four-hour visit. Each warning of drones and further missiles forces teams to down tools and dive for cover, though during our visit all were shot down or flew on towards other targets.
If there isn’t time to reach the site’s main shelter, the workers hide in the foundations of its towering chimneys.
“It’s very difficult,” says Vadym Bobyr, who is leading the recovery effort. “You’ve mentally prepared yourself to do a particular job, and then… the air raid siren goes off, and you have to get out as quickly as possible.”
The 39-year-old, who has worked here half his life, is dwarfed by the mangled ruins and daunted by the challenge of rebuilding the plant.
“It’s emotionally difficult, because we’ve already repaired all this, got it running again, and now it’s happened all over again. It hurts, but we keep working and getting things done.”
As we speak there’s another alert – an incoming Banderol cruise missile.
The workers dart through the maze of passages and pipework but there isn’t time to reach a shelter – one of the plant’s thickest walls will have to do for cover. The missile was eventually intercepted 5km (3 miles) away.
Energy workers are at enormous risk. Since August there have been almost daily attacks on power facilities, claiming several lives every week. And it’s getting more dangerous.
On the edge of the site, with the latest threat over, a team returns to reinstating the power lines feeding the national grid. But they won’t be carrying electricity from the shattered plant before the end of this winter, at least.
President Volodymyr Zelensky says Ukraine still has enough generating capacity to meet electricity demand – the problem is getting it to homes and businesses when so many power lines and substations have been hit. Russia is using “waiter drones” that cling to pylons and cables and go undetected until Russia decides to detonate them.
Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said Russia was already putting the degraded electricity grid under even greater pressure than last year, and that overstretched air defences were unable to protect all of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.
“What is different is the scale of attacks and the different types of weapons used in these attacks. This is what is the difference – they’ve doubled in power and in scale”.
He said rebuilding the damaged power station would take at least until next summer, because workers under sustained attack were limited to only one or two productive hours per day.
“We are fighting for survival of not only the whole country but ordinary people, especially during winter,” Timchenko says.
