Despite drastic warnings of a nuclear catastrophe, the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in the Ukraine was shot at again on Sunday night. While the government in Kyiv blames Russia for the attacks, Moscow blames Ukrainian troops. The conflicting information could not initially be verified independently.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Mariano Grossi was “extremely concerned” about the shelling of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. It poses a “very real risk of a nuclear catastrophe” that could endanger public health and the environment in Ukraine and beyond. Any shelling aimed at the facility or emanating from it is tantamount to “playing with fire”. Military operations that threatened the safety of the power plant “must be avoided at all costs”.
According to the Ukrainian operating company Energoatom, a dry storage facility on the power plant site, in which 174 containers with spent fuel elements are stored in the open air, was damaged by a rocket attack during the incident on Saturday. In addition, three sensors for measuring radiation on the power plant site were damaged, which affects the ability to detect the release of radioactive substances. A worker was injured by shrapnel and taken to the hospital. On Sunday, the IAEA announced that the situation was stable and not threatening according to a preliminary assessment.
The Russian news agency Interfax, citing the Russian occupation administration of Enerhodar, the town adjacent to the power plant, reported that Ukrainian troops had fired a 220-millimeter rocket at the power plant. The six reactors have been under the military control of Russian troops since they took the plant in March, but are manned by Ukrainian operators. Enerhodar further stated that the Russian soldiers fled to safety shortly before the shelling. A power line leading to the power plant was damaged by fire on Friday. The operating crew then shut down a reactor block, which itself was not hit.
On Thursday, Russian troops fired dozens of rockets at the city of Nikopol. It is only about ten kilometers from the power plant on the other bank of the Dnieper River, which separates the Russian and Ukrainian troops in the hotly contested region. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for new sanctions against Russia. Russia’s “nuclear terror” requires “punishments against the Russian nuclear industry and nuclear fuel,” Zelensky wrote on Twitter. IAEA chief Grossi again demanded that the parties to the conflict grant him and inspectors from his authority access to the power plant in order to stabilize nuclear safety on site and to obtain independent information on the condition of the power plant.