The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Oct. 6 that it had identified shelling near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), including two rounds that struck just 1.25 km from the plant’s perimeter.
The shelling occurred between 14:05 and 15:30 local time (1105-1230 UTC), the team reported, and totaled about 15 rounds overall. No casualties were reported.
The IAEA warned that the military activity was adding to nuclear safety risks at a critically dangerous moment for the plant, which has been off the grid for almost two weeks.
The strikes “further underlined the constant dangers facing Europe’s largest nuclear power plant during the armed conflict”, it emphasized.
“The nuclear safety and security system is clearly not improving. On the contrary, the risks are growing,” said IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi on Monday night.
“The plant has now been without off-site power for almost two weeks, forcing it to rely on emergency diesel generators for the electricity it needs to cool its shutdown reactors and spent fuel,” he continued.
The current outage at the ZNPP, which has been ongoing since Sept. 23, is by far the longest since Russian forces captured the plant early in the 2022 full-scale invasion.
Moscow and Kyiv have traded blame for the shelling that led to the blackout, which Ukrainian authorities have warned is a precursor to Russia attempting to connect the plant to its own power grid.
Satellite imagery from May showed Russia building over 55 miles of electricity lines and pylons in just a few months to connect the Zaporizhzhia NPP to occupied territory in Ukraine’s south.
While the plant’s six reactors have been shut down since the full-scale invasion, a constant and reliable supply of electricity is needed to cool the nuclear fuel and prevent radiation release into the environment.
An interruption to electrical power to the cooling pumps led to the meltdown and explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, which was also shut down, in Japan in 2011 – the world’s second worst nuclear disaster after the Chornobyl NPP incident in Ukraine in 1986.
Government officials and energy watchdogs have said that the deadlock is rapidly becoming critical with the facility running off emergency diesel generators, while Zelensky accused Russia of “intentionally creating a risk of radiological incidents.”
On Oct. 4, Grossi characterised issues with restoring a vital power link to Zaporizhzhia NPP as “a question of political will,” saying “the security situation on the ground must improve so that the technicians can carry out their vital work without endangering their lives.”