Atomic Agency Says Ukraine Nuclear Plant Fire Has No Impact on Safety
It comes as both Ukraine and Russia blamed one another for a fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
As Ukraine and Russia blamed one another for a fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the U.N. agency that monitors nuclear energy said that “no impact” on safety was reported.
Its “team was told by ZNPP of an alleged drone attack today on one of the cooling towers located at the site,” the IAEA added. “No impact has been reported for nuclear safety.”
The damage that was done doesn’t “directly impact the safety of the six units in shutdown,” the statement added. But it warned that a fire onsite or in the vicinity of the units “represents a risk of spreading the fire also to facilities essential for safety.”
“The plant confirmed to the Team that there is no risk of elevated radiation levels as there is no radioactive material in the vicinity of the alleged attack area,” the IAEA said, adding that the U.N. independently verified the radiation levels onsite and found they were not changed.
It comes as both Ukrainian and Russian officials blamed one another for the fire, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying in a post on X that “Russian terrorists” who are in control of the plant, “the situation is not and cannot be normal.”
On Sunday, a “combat drone … flew through the top into the cooling tower and detonated,” he said, according to a translation. “Judging by the speed with which the fire started, we can assume that there was something else there—bottles of gasoline or napalm because the fire broke out very quickly and spread over a large area,” he continued.
Rosatom, a Russian state atomic energy company, described the incident as an act of “nuclear terrorism,” it said via state-run media. The fire was extinguished by Russia’s emergency management agency, it also said.
Since the war broke out two years ago, there have been concerns that fighting around the Zaporizhzhia plant, located on the Dnipro River about 30 miles southwest of the city of Zaporizhzhia, could lead to a nuclear disaster.
![A view of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant from the bank of Kakhovka Reservoir near the town of Nikopol in Ukraine on June 16, 2023. (Alina Smutko/Reuters)](https://www.theepochtimes.com/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F08%2F12%2Fid5704119-2024-04-18T210149Z_1_LYNXNPEK3H0WD_RTROPTP_4_UKRAINE-CRISIS-RUSSIA-ZAPORIZHZHIA-NUCLEARPOWER-LSedit-1200x800.jpg&w=1200&q=75)
The world’s worst nuclear disaster took place in 1986 Chernobyl, Ukraine, while it was under the control of the Soviet Union. At the time, the communist regime denied the disaster’s scale before it was forced to make evacuations of the area around the plant, which is still uninhabited to this day.
“Ukraine is proving that it really knows how to restore justice and guarantees exactly the kind of pressure that is needed … pressure on the aggressor,” he said, referring to Russia.