Call for experts to visit nuclear site
Russia, Ukraine trade claims over power station shelling as officials seek IAEA delegation to ‘demilitarise’ it
Russia and Ukraine traded accusations yesterday that each side is shelling Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. Russia claimed that Ukrainian shelling caused a power surge and fire and forced staff to lower output from two reactors, while Ukraine has blamed Russian troops for storing weapons there.
Nuclear experts have warned that more shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which was captured by Russia early in the war, is fraught with danger.
The Kremlin echoed that yesterday, claiming that Kyiv was attacking the plant and urging Western powers to force a stop to that.
“Shelling of the territory of the nuclear plant by the Ukrainian armed forces is highly dangerous,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “It’s fraught with catastrophic consequences for vast territories, for the entire Europe.”
Ukraine’s military intelligence spokesman, Andriy Yusov, countered that Russian forces have planted explosives at the plant to head off an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive in the region. Previously, Ukrainian officials have said Russia is launching attacks from the plant and using Ukrainian workers there as human shields.
Yusov called on Russia to “make a goodwill gesture and hand over control of the plant to an international commission and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), if not to the Ukrainian military”. Ukraine’s ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, likewise urged that the United Nations, the IAEA and the international community send a delegation to “completely demilitarise the territory” and provide security guarantees to plant employees.
The IAEA is the UN’s nuclear watchdog. Its director-general, Rafael Grossi, told AP last week that the situation surrounding the Zaporizhzhia plant “is completely out of control”, and issued an urgent plea to Russia and Ukraine to allow experts to visit the complex to stabilise the situation. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres voiced support for that idea yesterday, saying, “any attack to a nuclear plant is a suicidal thing”.
One expert in nuclear materials at Imperial College London said the reactor at Zaporizhzhia is modern and housed inside a heavily reinforced steel-and-concrete building designed to protect against disasters. “As such, I do not believe there would be a high probably of a breach of the containment building, even if it was accidently struck by an explosive shell, and even less likely the reactor itself could be damaged,” said Mark Wenman at the college’s Nuclear Energy Futures.
He also said the complex’s spent fuel tanks, where the shells reportedly hit, are strong and probably don’t contain much spent fuel. “Although it may seem worrying, and any fighting on a nuclear site would be illegal according to international law, the likelihood of a serious nuclear release is still small.”
Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov said the attack on Monday caused a power surge and smoke, triggering an emergency shutdown. Fire teams extinguished flames, and the plant’s personnel lowered the output of reactors No. 5 and No. 6 to 500 megawatts, he said. The head of the Ukrainian company operating the plant said all but one power line connecting it to Ukraine’s energy system had been destroyed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decried “the shelling and mining” of the plant and called it “nuclear blackmail”. He called for sanctions against Moscow’s nuclear industry.