But now the company faces a different problem.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Energoatom Chairman Petro Kotin said the company could restart two of the reactors within days to protect safety facilities as winter approaches and the decline temperatures.

“If you have a low temperature, you will freeze everything inside. Safety equipment will be damaged,” he said in his office at the company’s headquarters in Kyiv. “So you need heating and the only heating will come from the operating reactor.”

The plant’s last operational reactor was placed in what is known as ‘cold shutdown’ last month, reducing the likelihood of a dangerous meltdown.

But there is always a risk as long as there are nuclear fuel assemblies inside, Kotin explained. Intentional damage to reactors or safety and cooling equipment, or failure of these systems due to cold temperatures, could always lead to a disaster.

“You have waste heat and you have to constantly supply the coolant for these fuel assemblies. If you stop cooling, you will have a meltdown. And that’s how it works,” he said.

Russian troops occupy the plant and its surroundings, including the nearby town of Enerhodar, while thousands of Ukrainian workers continue to maintain the facility. The plant is the city’s only heat source, Kotin said.

Energoatom could decide on Wednesday to restart the reactors.

“Right now, we are assessing all the risks. And it depends on the weather. And actually, we don’t have much time to do that,” Kotin said.

At the time of the forced closure, Ukrainian officials warned that it was only an interim measure and, as such, unreliable.

Steven Arndt, president of the American Nuclear Society, said US power plants often use heaters to keep equipment, especially feedwater storage tanks, from freezing. He did not have enough information to say whether restarting the reactors at the Zaporizhzhia plant was necessary.

“These heaters run on electricity, which doesn’t have to come from the reactors, if the plant has a grid connection or backup generators instead of offsite power supplies,” Arndt said per e -mail.

The power plant is in one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia has illegally claimed as its territory. The plant’s general manager, Ihor Murashov, was arrested and blindfolded by Russian forces as he returned from work on Friday, hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties to annex the areas.

Murashov reported that he was not beaten or otherwise abused, but was forced to make false statements on camera before his release, according to Kotin.

“I would say it was mental torture,” Kotin said of the baseless false confession. is in contact with Ukrainian special forces.

Murashov was eventually released at a checkpoint on the edge of Russian-controlled territory and had to walk about 15 kilometers (9 miles) through no man’s land to Ukrainian-held areas, according to Kotin.

Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov said he has since spoken with Murashov, who said ‘he spent two days in solitary confinement in the basement, with handcuffs and a bag over his head His condition can hardly be called normal.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said on Tuesday that it “understands that Mr. Murashov is now with his family in territory controlled by Ukraine and will not prosecute not his duties at the ZNPP”.

“It is not yet clear who will replace him in this role,” the agency said.

The UN agency said its own director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, planned to travel to Kyiv and then Moscow this week to seek agreement on a “nuclear protection and safety zone” around the Zaporizhzhia power plant.

Russian forces occupied the nuclear power plant, which ranks among the largest in the world, at the start of the war. Both sides blame each other for the bombings that damaged the power lines connecting it to the grid.

Kotin on Tuesday renewed his call for the creation of a “demilitarized zone” around the plant, where two experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency are currently based.

Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed reporting.