The security situation at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is deteriorating after a drone attack on a nearby road, the United Nations energy watchdog warned on Saturday (17).
The plant, in southern Ukraine, has been under Russian control since March 2022.
“Once again we see an escalation of the nuclear safety dangers facing the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. I remain extremely concerned and reiterate my call for maximum restraint by all parties and strict observance of the five concrete principles established for the protection of the plant,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a press release on Saturday.
The plant told the IAEA that a drone struck outside the plant’s protected area, near “essential cooling water irrigation lakes and about 100 meters from the Dniprovska power line, the only remaining 750 kilovolt line supplying power to (the plant),” an IAEA statement said.
The IAEA team visited the area and reported that the damage appeared to have been caused by a drone. There were no casualties or damaged equipment, but the road between the two main gates of the plant was damaged.
Russia’s state news agency TASS said plant staff had accused Ukraine of the drone attack.
Russia’s state news agency TASS said plant staff had accused Ukraine of the drone attack.
“At 7 a.m. Moscow time, the Ukrainian drone launched a projectile on the road that runs along the power units outside the perimeter. Personnel use this road all the time. No one was injured, but once again a direct threat to the safety of personnel and the plant was created,” he said.
Ukraine has yet to publicly comment on the attack. However, Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for previous incidents at the plant.
Last weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces had started a fire at the plant, showing a video of a large cloud of smoke rising from one of the towers on the plant’s territory, but several Russian officials said Ukraine was behind the incident.
The IAEA team reported on Saturday that there had been intense military activity in the area over the past week.
“A significant fire in one of the cooling towers (at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant) earlier this week resulted in considerable damage, although there was no immediate threat to nuclear safety,” the IAEA added.
There have also been alarms of air raids and drone attacks on nuclear power plants in Khmelnytskyy, Rivne and southern Ukraine, as well as at the Chernobyl facility, the IAEA said.
“Nuclear power plants are designed to be resilient against technical or human failures and external events, including extreme ones, but they are not built to withstand a direct military attack, nor should they be, just like any other energy facility in the world,” Grossi said. “This latest attack highlights the vulnerability of such facilities in conflict zones and the need to continue monitoring the fragile situation.”
Grossi added that he is willing to visit the Zaporizhzhia factory.
Meanwhile, TASS reported that Grossi was also invited to visit a nuclear power plant in Kursk, the southern Russian region where Ukrainian forces have launched a growing incursion.
“An invitation to visit the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant and its satellite city of Kurchatov in the near future has been conveyed to the head of the IAEA. This is an unusual but very timely and important step,” Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said on Saturday on his Telegram channel.
Andrii Kovalenko, head of the Center for Combating Disinformation at Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said on Friday that “Russia may be preparing a nuclear provocation. Their scenario of accusing us of terrorism and an attack on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant did not work, and now they are lying about a ‘dirty bomb’ and our possible provocation.”
