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The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog chief warned on Tuesday of heightened risk at the nuclear power plant in Kursk, Russia, where Ukraine has been conducting a military counteroffensive.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi led the mission to the nuclear site after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed it came under fire following Ukraine’s incursion into the region. Kyiv has denied accusations that it targeted the plant.
“The danger or the possibility of a nuclear accident has emerged near here,” Grossi told reporters, according to Reuters. He added that during his visit of the plant he saw evidence of drone strikes in the area.
“I was informed about the impact of the drones. I was shown some of the remnants of them and signs of the impact they had,” Grossi said, without saying who was responsible.
He warned that the nuclear reactor at the Kursk plant doesn’t have a protective dome, unlike most nuclear facilities, making its core very vulnerable to artillery or drone strikes.
“The core of the reactor containing nuclear material is protected just by a normal roof, he said during his visit. “This makes it extremely exposed and fragile, for example, to an artillery impact or a drone or a missile.”
“A nuclear power plant of this type, so close to a point of contact or a military front, is an extremely serious fact that we take very seriously.”
Despite the ongoing conflict, the power station is operating “in very close to normal conditions,” according to Grossi.
“My message is the same for everyone: no nuclear accident can happen. It is our responsibility to make sure of that,” Grossi said at the news conference, adding that the agency won’t take sides in the Russian-Ukrainian war. “This conflict, this war, is not the responsibility of the IAEA.”
The war that reignited following Russia’s all-out military assault on Ukraine, now in its third year, has been fraught with nuclear risks, with numerous instances of nuclear weapon saber-rattling and recklessness near energy-generating nuclear facilities.
After the start of the conflict, Grossi worked to establish five principles to be respected by both Russia and Ukraine to ensure nuclear safety and avert an atomic catastrophe.
Russia captured Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant at the start of its invasion and has repeatedly endangered the plant’s safety, drawing condemnation from Grossi.
Grossi will travel to Ukraine next week to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and discuss “a number of things,” including the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and the presence of IAEA experts at other sites in Ukraine.
The effects of world’s worst nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in the 1980s are still felt to this day. Hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine were contaminated, and an area of around 30 kilometers around the plant remains essentially uninhabitable. Soviet authorities initially denied the scale of the disaster.
