Dozens of fish carcasses lined the cooling pond outside the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Footage released by Ukraine's Energoatom purports to show the bodies of dead fish washing up on the cooling pond's banks.

According to the state nuclear power company, due to the shutdown of power units at the station warm water stopped entering the cooling pond.

This resulted in the pond's temperature dropping to 13 degrees Celsius, seeing dozens of fish perish.

There are two species of fish inhabiting the pond, tilapia and catfish. They were introduced to eat algae forming in the body of water, keeping the cooling tubes clean.

, the occupiers at the ZNPP provoked an environmental catastrophe. Their actions are destroying an important environmental component of the plant's operation. As reported, as a result of the shutdown of the power units of the station, warm water does not enter the ZNPP cooling pond, as a result of which the water temperature dropped to about +13 degrees. This led to the mass extinction of fish in the pond. So far, it has been stocked with two types of fish - warm-water therapy and Asian catfish, which were introduced about 25 years ago to ensure environmental cleanliness. The fish perform a sanitary function by destroying green algae and keeping the turbine condenser cooling tubes clean. In conditions when the temperature in winter never dropped below +18 degrees, the fish multiplied. So if the temperature of the water in the cooling pond does not rise soon, about a thousand tons of dead fish will be washed ashore.
Energoarom press ofice video