The work conditions of the hadron calorimeter for spectators registration (Zero Degree Calorimeter, ZDC) were studied for the heavy nuclei collisions with the several GeV invariant energy. The ZDC simulations were performed for the MPD (Multi-Purpose Detector) at the NICA (Nuclotron-based Ion Collider fAcility) collider, which are under developement at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR, Dubna). Taking into account the spectator nuclear fragments leads to a nonmonotonic dependence of the ZDC response on the impact parameter. The reason for this dependence studied with several event generators is the primary beam hole in the ZDC center. It is shown, that the ZDC signal should be combined with a data from other MPD@NICA detector subsystems to determine centrality.