EXPLAINER
World powers are sounding the alarm after the latest drone attack on a Russian-controlled nuclear facility impacted the reactor's confinement structure.
Ukraine's Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is dangerously close to an accident due to recent drone attacks, according to the head of the United Nations nuclear monitoring agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
This is what we know:
What caused the alert?
Since April 7, Europe's largest nuclear energy facility has been the target of a series of drone attacks.
The latest attack on Sunday set “a very dangerous precedent” because the reactor's confinement structure was hit, said IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi, whose agency has personnel deployed at the facility.
Moscow and kyiv blame each other for attacks on the site occupied by Russian forces shortly after their large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Last week, all six power units at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine went into cold shutdown mode for the first time since 2022.
How did the world react?
On Monday, the UN Security Council (UNSC) addressed fears of a nuclear catastrophe, with Grossi calling for an end to “these reckless attacks” on the plant.
“Although this time, fortunately, they have not caused any radiological incident, they significantly increase the risk at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, where nuclear safety is already compromised,” he said.
“We are getting dangerously close to a nuclear accident. We must not allow complacency to let a roll of the dice decide what will happen tomorrow,” Grossi said.
US Deputy Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood told the Security Council that “Russia does not care about these risks” and added that “if it did, it would not continue to control the plant by force.”
Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia blamed Ukraine for the attacks, saying that “in recent months, such attacks have not only resumed but intensified significantly.”
Ukraine's UN ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, called the attacks “a well-planned false flag operation by the Russian Federation,” which he claimed Russia had designed to distract the world from its large-scale invasion of His neighbor.
Geng Shuang, China's deputy ambassador to the UN, called on “all parties to uphold the principle of indivisible safety”, strictly adhering to the ultimate goal of nuclear safety and resolutely avoiding any man-made nuclear accident at the nuclear power plant. Zaporozhye.
Why is the Zaporizhzhia NPP important?
The Soviet-designed facility is the largest in Europe and one of the 10 largest in the world, and used to generate half of Ukraine's nuclear power before the war.
The plant has a total capacity of about 6,000 megawatts, enough for about four million homes.
In the event of a radiation leak or explosion, the entire European continent could be contaminated, experts recently told Al Jazeera.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of using the Zaporizhzhia plant to launch “nuclear terrorism.”
How the plant has been central to the war
The city of Zaporizhzhia, as well as the region of the same name, have been the scene of active fighting since the beginning of Russia's war against Ukraine.
On the eighth day of Russia's war in Ukraine, March 3, 2022, for the first time in history, a functioning nuclear station was taken over militarily.
In the days and weeks following the seizure of power, Moscow deployed hundreds of Chechen military and national guards to the station.
Since then, warring sides have used it as part of information warfare.
Zelenskyy raised the alarm in June and again in July this year about a possible plan by the Russians to sabotage the Zaporizhzhia plant.
In turn, Russian authorities also repeatedly accuse kyiv of planning an act of “sabotage” in Zaporizhzhia.
