Attacks on Ukraine power plant stir concern over nuclear accident
Artillery barrages struck Europe’s largest nuclear power station, located in Russian-occupied territory in southern Ukraine, at the weekend, sparking international fears over the risk of radiation leaks. The shelling on Saturday damaged radiation sensors after striking close to a storage facility for spent fuel at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear power holding company, said on Sunday. Each side blamed the other for the attack. No radiation leaks were reported. But the mounting concern about the threat came as the situation at Ukraine’s Black Sea ports had appeared to be easing, with another convoy of vessels carrying agricultural exports setting sail on Sunday. Russia’s Interfax news agency on Sunday quoted Russian occupation forces as accusing Ukraine of conducting the shelling and confirmed that a location near the spent nuclear fuel store had been hit. In a statement Energoatom said the Russians had fired rockets at the plant. The development follows two shelling incidents late last week that prompted the UN’s nuclear safety watchdog to sound the alarm and call for a team of independent experts to go to the plant. Rafael Mariano Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Saturday he was “extremely concerned by the shelling . . . which underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster that could threaten public health and the environment in Ukraine and beyond”.
He described the incident as “the latest in a long line of increasingly alarming reports” and warned that “any military firepower directed at or from the facility would amount to playing with fire, with potentially catastrophic consequences”. On Sunday he said in a tweet that “the IAEA team must go to Zaporizhzhia . . . We can put together a safety, security and safeguards mission and deliver the indispensable assistance and impartial assessment that is needed.”
Kurt Volker, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and former special US envoy to Ukraine, said the increased supply of longer-range weaponry to Ukraine had made the Black Sea “calmer” by pushing back Russia’s naval presence and in turn, opening a corridor for renewed grain exports.
But he said that increased hostilities in southern Ukraine — including at the Zaporizhzhia plant — amounted to Russia stirring fear in order to persuade the international community to press Ukraine not to use advanced weaponry provided by the west to recapture territory. “I think the international community sees through it,” he added.