Biden and Zelensky discuss Russia's attack on the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant

President Joe Biden spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart Volodomyr Zelensky on Thursday night to discuss Russia’s shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

The White House was monitoring the situation, officials said, without providing details of the call. 

The Zaporizhzhya plant, 350 miles south of the capital Kyiv, was partially on fire on Thursday night – although it was believed that the fire was in an administrative building, rather than a reactor.

The plant has six reactors. It was unclear whether the nuclear fuel rods remained in the reactors, or whether they had been shut down. 

Nuclear experts were urgently calling for the fighting to stop, though – pointing out that if the electricity to the plant was cut off, it could trigger a devastating incident.

A building at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant was on fire in the early hours of Friday morning. It is believed that the structure is an office building, rather than a reactor

Even if the reactors were shut down and the nuclear rods placed into cooling pools, the pools required large quantities of water and electricity, said Joseph Cirincione, who has worked on nuclear weapons policy in Washington for over 35 years.

The International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday night said they were deeply concerned – but emphasized that no increase in radiation levels had been reported.

‘#Ukraine regulator tells IAEA there has been no change reported in #radiation levels at the #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site,’ they tweeted.