Will Ukraine cause a new nuclear disaster?

Recently, Zaporozhe nuclear power station has been back in the news. It is the biggest such installation in Europe and one of the ten largest in the world. But that is not the reason for its current prominence. That, instead, stems from the fact that it is inside a war zone and at risk of a serious accident. Or, to be precise, an incident. For if something is finally going to go terribly wrong at Zaporozhe, it is virtually certain that it will not be an accident but the result of a deliberate policy. And to be even more precise, of Ukrainian policy.

The essence of the power plant’s dangerous situation is not hard to sketch. Built in the 1980s under the Soviet Union, when Russia and Ukraine both belonged to it, the Zaporozhe nuclear power station came under Russian control in March 2022. By fall of that year, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) started visiting the plant. Throughout, it has repeatedly been at the center of major – and well-founded – scares because military action has been getting far too close to it. While the plant is essentially shut down and not used to generate power, it needs constant maintenance. In particular, its six reactors require constant cooling. For that, they need to stay connected to the electrical grid. Moreover, the territory of the power station features various sources of potential nuclear contamination.

Now – and not for the first time – the IAEA, an organization that cultivates an emphatically low-key public communications style, has warned that “the nuclear safety situation” at Zaporozhe is “deteriorating.” Its director general, Rafael Grossi, has spoken of “an escalation,” and remains “extremely concerned,” while calling for maximum restraint from all sides. In IAEA diplomatese, this is close to a cry of despair.

The reason for Grossi’s urgent warning is that a drone has bombed a location “just outside of the plant’s protected area … close to the essential cooling water sprinkler ponds and about 100 meters” from the the only remaining substantial power line providing electricity to the plant. Remember: no power, no cooling.

According to the IAEA, its representatives at Zaporozhe have also “reported that military activity in the area – including very close to the plant – has been intense for the last week,” with “frequent explosions, repetitive heavy machine gun and rifle fire and artillery at various distances.”

In addition, the IAEA further reports, a significant fire at a cooling tower “earlier this week resulted in considerable damage, although there was no immediate threat to nuclear safety.” While “nuclear power plants are designed to be resilient against technical or human failures and external events including extreme ones,” they are not built, Grossi has stressed, “to withstand a direct military attack.” 

Grossi and his staff have received some criticism for, in essence, being too diplomatic and not outspoken enough. But that is unfair. The IAEA’s ability to do its best – even if it may well not be enough – in a war zone is based on keeping a low profile. Its access to the Zaporozhe nuclear power station and any influence it may have depends on maintaining working relationships with all parties concerned. Think, if you will, of the IAEA as a sort of Red Cross but for nuclear reactors.

Yet that does not mean we have to be similarly reticent to set out a few basic facts: Russian managers at the plant have blamed the drone attack on Ukraine. They are certain to be telling the truth. Russia has not the slightest interest in provoking or risking a nuclear accident at a power station that it controls, is seen as being responsible for, and has legally assigned to its own Rosatom organization. Moreover, Moscow has made clear that it intends to keep the whole Zaporozhe Region, as well as other, adjacent territories. Whatever you think of that plan, that circumstance as well makes already hackneyed Ukrainian accusations about Russian schemes to stage an incident absurd.

Ukraine, on the other hand, has a motive to, if not deliberately cause, then to at least risk an incident. Kiev would use it for information war purposes: to blame Moscow, frighten Ukraine’s own Western partners, and seek what the Zelensky regime always seeks, namely ever-deeper involvement of the West in a war that Ukraine is losing. In addition, Ukraine has politicians as well as military and intelligence officers who are entirely capable of hatching a scheme that would accept the fallout, literally, from such sabotage as long as it seems to offer strategic benefit.

Don’t think that’s possible? Recall what we in the West have just been permitted to learn and now even say about the Nord Stream attacks of September 2022, which also constituted a massive ecological catastrophe. Ukraine was heavily involved (although certainly not alone, as Western mainstream media now ask us to believe), its politicians, media, and Western “friends” brazenly lied about all of it, and, finally, they all blamed Russia, as absurd as that has always been. 

See the parallels? Only that a nuclear incident would be much worse again, of course. It is not the IAEA’s job, but that of Ukraine’s Western sponsors in Washington and its clients to warn off Kiev. They will most likely fail to do so, but in a better world, this time the Zelensky regime would be told in advance to abandon its insane and selfish schemes. This needs to happen not behind closed doors but publicly, so that even Zelensky and company – all of them – get the memo. And it must come with credible threats, not against Moscow but Kiev. For no one can be allowed to play with nuclear fire.