Recent drone attacks on the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine have raised the risk of a nuclear accident to a new level, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency warned on April 15, calling on the UN Security Council to do everything in its power to minimize the risk.
"We are getting dangerously close to a nuclear accident. We must not allow complacency to let a roll of the dice decide what happens tomorrow," Rafael Grossi, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the council.
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The plant has come under a series of drone attacks since April 7 for which Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other. A team of international specialists at the plant confirmed that attacks took place on April 7, and said one of the attacks hit the containment dome of the Unit 6 reactor building.
Damage to the structure was superficial, but the attack “sets a very dangerous precedent of the successful targeting of the reactor containment,” Grossi said.
The other two attacks on April 7 were in close proximity to the main reactor buildings and resulted in at least one casualty, Grossi added.
In addition, experts at the site have been informed by the plant’s operators of a drone strike on the site’s oxygen and nitrogen production facility, two attacks on a training center located just outside the site's perimeter, and reports of a drone shot down above the turbine hall of Unit 6, he said without specifying when those attacks occurred.
The attacks have not led to a radiological incident, but “they significantly increase the risk at Zaporizhzhya [nuclear power plant], where nuclear safety is already compromised,” Grossi said, according to a transcript of his comments posted at the IAEA’s website.
"These reckless attacks must cease immediately," Grossi said.
The power plant has been occupied by Russian forces since shortly after their invasion started in February 2022, and the IAEA has deployed technicians at the facility. It has been shut down but still requires electricity to power its safety and cooling systems.
The plant is currently relying on just two lines of external power, and in the past year there have been at least four occasions when the plant has had only one line of external power supply, Grossi said.
Grossi is also concerned about an increase in isolated drone incursions in the vicinity of the facility and in the nearby town of Enerhodar and other areas of nuclear safety degradation.