Attack on nuclear plant provokes worldwide alarm
Universal condemnation as Russian assault sets largest atomic energy facility in Europe on fire
Russian troops seized the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe after a middle-of-the-night attack that set it on fire and briefly raised worldwide fears of a catastrophe in the most chilling turn yet in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Firefighters put out the blaze, and no radiation was released, UN and Ukrainian officials said. Russian forces pressed on with their offensive on multiple fronts, though they did not appear to gain significant ground in fighting on Friday. The number of refugees fleeing the country has passed 1.2 million.
While the vast Russian armoured column threatening Kyiv remained stalled outside the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military has launched hundreds of missile and artillery attacks on cities and other sites across the country, and made significant gains on the ground in the south in an apparent bid to cut off Ukraine’s access to the sea.
In the attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the southeastern city of Enerhodar, the chief of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, said a Russian “projectile” hit a training centre, not any of the six reactors.
The attack triggered global alarm and fear of a catastrophe that could dwarf the world’s worst nuclear disaster, at Ukraine’s Chernobyl in 1986. In an emotional nighttime speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he feared an explosion that would be “the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe”.
But nuclear officials, from Sweden to China, said no radiation spikes had been reported. Grossi concurred.
Authorities said Russian troops had taken control of the overall site but plant staff continued to run it. Only one reactor was operating, at 60 per cent of capacity, Grossi said in the aftermath of the attack.
Two people were injured in the fire, Grossi said. Ukraine’s state nuclear plant operator Enerhoatom said three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two wounded.
Ukraine Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal appealed to the IAEA and the European Union to send representatives to all five of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants.
“This is a question of the security of the whole world,” he said in a video address.
Without producing evidence, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed that a Ukrainian “sabotage group” had set the fire at Zaporizhzhia.
At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, Ukraine’s UN ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, said the fire broke out as a result of Russian shelling of the plant and accused Moscow of committing “an act of nuclear terrorism”.
“It was incredibly reckless and dangerous. And it threatened the safety of civilians across Russia, Ukraine and Europe,” US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield said.
Russia’s UN envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, said Western countries and Ukraine were exaggerating the incident. He insisted Russian forces “negotiated” control of the facility and emphasised what he called the shared experience of the Chernobyl disaster.
The crisis unfolded after Grossi earlier in the week expressed grave concern that the fighting could cause accidental damage to Ukraine’s 15 nuclear reactors at five plants around the country.
Atomic safety experts said a war fought amid nuclear reactors represented an unprecedented and highly dangerous situation.
“These plants are now in a situation that few people ever seriously contemplated when they were originally built,” said Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. “No nuclear plant has been designed to withstand a potential threat of a full-scale military attack.”
Dr Alex Rosen, of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, said the incident was probably the result of military units overestimating the precision of their weapons, given that the prevailing winds would have carried any radioactive fallout towards Russia.
“Russia cannot have any interest in contaminating its own territory,” Rosen said. He said the danger came not just from the reactors but from the risk of enemy fire hitting storage facilities that hold spent fuel rods.
It threatened the safety of civilians across Russia, Ukraine and Europe
LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.