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According to the Guardian, Zelenskiy said (on the fighting at Zaporizhia nuclear plant):
“If there will be an explosion, it will be the end to all of us: the end of Europe, the evacuation of Europe,”
Source: The Guardian
While such a thing would certainly be extremely bad, and not just for Europe - would this really mean the "evacuation" of Europe, or how much exaggeration is there in that claim ?
Almost certainly not quite that. According to experts cited by the BBC:
Experts say that although the attack was dangerous, there are important differences between the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia plants.
The Zaporizhzhia site is far more secure, according to Dr Mark Wenman of Imperial College London. [...]
The Zaporizhzhia plant also does not contain any graphite in its reactor.
At Chernobyl graphite caused a significant fire and was the source of the radiation plume that travelled across Europe. [...]
Prof Claire Corkhill, a nuclear materials expert at University of Sheffield, says the worst-case scenario would be a loss of cooling similar to that at Japan's Fukushima plant following the 2011 tsunami.
In that case a loss of power led to a loss of cooling, which caused a meltdown in three of its nuclear reactors.
Which would still render a significant area uninhabitable, if Fukushima is the yardstick; 37,000 people still cannot return to their habitations due to radiation (down from 165,000 right after the accident)--granted Japan is more densely populated.
Also, about one million Ukrainians have already fled the country due to the war, so one could (cynically) argue that one or two hundred thousands more would not make much difference in this context.
