ZAPORIZZHIA, Ukraine (AP) — Most of the Russian weapons that hit the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia kill in an instant: drones, ballistic missiles, glide bombs, artillery shells. But Russian soldiers control another weapon they have never deployed, with the potential be just as deadly: the neighboring Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

The nuclear power plant, as it is called, once produced more electricity than any other nuclear power plant in Europe. It fell to Russian forces in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion, and Russia has retained all six of its reactors ever since. The factory has been the subject of repeated attacks from both sides blame the other.

These double dangers – bombs and radiation – the ghost families of Zaporozhye. An Associated Press team spent nearly a week in the city to learn more about its construction spree for its future: an underground school system.

Here’s what AP found:

About 50 kilometers (31 miles) away, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is in operation. in cold shutdown for two years after intense negotiations between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Russian government. The IAEA rotated a handful of staff on site ever since.

There are risks even in the event of a cold shutdown, when the reactor operates but does not produce electricity. The main danger is that its external power supply, which comes from territory under Ukrainian control and subject to constant Russian bombing, will be cut off for a longer period than the generators can handle.

The nuclear plant requires electricity to keep critical backup systems operating, including water pumps that prevent meltdowns, radiation monitors and other essential safety systems. Russia has repeatedly struck Ukraine’s power grid, attacks which have intensified this year. Underscoring the constant danger, power to the nuclear plant was cut again for three days as rescuers struggled to put out the fire.

The Zaporizhzhia plant has a safer and more modern design than Chernobyl, known in Russian as Chernobyl, and the risk of a large-scale meltdown is not the same, experts say. But this does not reduce the risk to zero.

Most of the city’s younger residents have never seen the inside of a classroom. Schools that suspended in-person classes during the COVID-19 pandemic nearly four years ago continued online classes after the war began in February 2022.

Construction has begun on a dozen underground schools designed to be radiation and bomb resistant and capable of educating 12,000 students.

The cost of building an underground school system is enormous: the budget for the underground version of Gymnasium No. 71 alone amounts to more than 112 million hryvnias ($2.7 million). International donors cover most of it, and national and local governments have made it a priority along with funding the military.

But most parents say the bombs, which hit the city daily, are a much more tangible fear than radiation.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accuses Russia of deliberately targeting nuclear power plants. Russian forces took control of Chernobyl area in the first days of the invasion, only to be pushed back by Ukrainian forces.

Since the start of the war, Russia has repeatedly alluded to its stockpile of nuclear weapons without making direct threats. In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would consider any attack by a country backed by a nuclear-armed nation to be a joint attack and stressed that Russia could respond with nuclear weapons to any attack that constitutes a “critical threat to our sovereignty”.

Ukrainian officials fear that Russian attacks on nuclear power plants in Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia are just the beginning. During his speech at the end of September before the United Nations General Assembly, Zelensky warned that Russia was preparing strikes against more nuclear power plants, which produce much of Ukraine’s electricity.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York And Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Additional AP coverage of the nuclear landscape: