Radiation levels normal as fire burns at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, IAEA says
By Simone McCarthy, CNN
A fire at Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant is still burning following an attack by Russian troops, though a plant spokesman says background radiation levels are normal and fighting has temporarily ceased.
Several dozen firefighters were working to tackle the blaze, which started in a training building outside the main reactor complex of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s State Emergency Services (SES) said in a statement on Telegram Friday morning local time.
In a Facebook post early Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of intentionally firing at the power plant, after a fire broke out at the facility following heavy shelling from Russian forces.
Ukrainian authorities say the power plant has not sustained any critical damage, though the situation remains fluid as firefighters continue to battle the blaze.
“Russian tanks are shooting at the atomic blocks equipped with thermal imagers. They know what they are shooting at. They’ve been preparing for this (attack),” Zelensky said in the post, adding “our guys are keeping the atomic power station secure.”
The very fact Russia launched an attack at the plant is itself an extremely dangerous act and could cause a potential catastrophe, he said.
“No country besides Russia has ever fired upon an atomic power plant’s reactors. The first time, the first time in history,” he said, urging European leaders to “wake up now” and stop Russian forces “before this becomes a nuclear disaster.”
The plant, near the city of Enerhodar in southeastern Ukraine, had not sustained any critical damage in the attack, Andrii Tuz, a plant spokesman, told CNN on Friday, adding that when firefighters initially arrived they were blocked by Russian troops.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Ukraine’s regulator had told the organization there had been no change in reported radiation levels and that the fire had had not affected “essential” equipment.
United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said the US had activated its Nuclear Incident Response Team and is monitoring events in consultation with the Department of Defense, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the White House.
The plant’s reactors are being “safely shut down,” Granholm said, as she called for an end to military action near the facility. “Russian military operations near the plant are reckless and must cease,” she said.
The IAEA on Friday said via Twitter that it had put its Incident and Emergency Centre “in full 24/7 response mode due to serious situation.”
Both US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson discussed the situation in separate calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky early Friday. According to statements from London and Washington, the leaders called for Russia to cease military activities and allow full access to emergency workers.
Johnson will seek an emergency UN Security Council meeting in the coming hours, and the UK will raise the issue immediately with Russia and close partners, the British statement said.
Attention has focused on the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear power facilities as Russia’s invasion of the country intensifies. The prospect of the fire causing damage at the nuclear plant has alarmed experts, though they cautioned that it was too early to gauge the full impact.
Graham Allison, Professor at Belfer Center, Harvard University told Anderson Cooper early Friday that “facts are unfolding” but “not all fires in a power plant, have catastrophic consequences.”
Plant came under attack
Reports of an attack on the facility emerged Friday morning, with video of the scene showing a firefight lighting up the backdrop of the Zaporizhzhia facility before dawn.
A large number of Russian tanks and infantry “broke through the block-post” to Enerhodar, a few kilometers from the Zaporizhzhia power plant, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said, according to a statement from the watchdog.
Flames could also be seen on video footage, though for some time it was unclear where the fire was or the scale of the threat posed to the facility.
Grossi spoke with Ukraine’s Prime Minister and the country’s nuclear regulator about the fire, the IAEA said in a tweet early Friday. It later emerged that the building on fire was a training center outside the main reactor complex.
Earlier, Matthew Bunn, a James R. Schlesinger Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School on the Ukraine Nuclear Plant told CNN: “It’s not by any means the worst-case scenario. Right now, the main dangers to the Ukrainian people are bullets, bombs, and shells, not radiation.”
The Zaporizhzhia plant contains six of the country’s 15 nuclear energy reactors, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The facility accounts for one-fifth of the average annual electricity production in Ukraine, according to Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear power operator.
In an interview with CNN on Thursday, IAEA’s Grossi said the agency was in “constant contact” with Ukrainian counterparts to ensure the safety of facilities in Ukraine.
“What makes it unprecedented is this is the first time in post-second world war history we have a full-fledged military operation amidst…a big number of nuclear facilities, including nuclear reactors,” said Grossi.
“There is always the danger of military activity that could affect the sites or that there might be some interruption or some disruption in the normal operation of any of these facilities that may result in a problem or an accident,” he said.
Zaporizhzhia is located about 125 miles (200 kilometers) west of the city of Donetsk within one of the two pro-Moscow territories recognized as an independent state last month by Russia.
UN resolution addresses nuclear threat
On Thursday, IAEA member states passed a resolution calling on Russia to cease actions against nuclear facilities in Ukraine, diplomats said.
The resolution, which was led by Canada and Poland, and supported by 26 other countries, deplored Russia’s “aggressive activity and attacks against nuclear sites in Ukraine, and seizing and taking control of nuclear facilities,” the ambassador at the UK mission in Vienna Corinne Kitsell said.
Only Russia and China voted against the resolution, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.
On Wednesday, Russia notified the IAEA that its forces had taken control of the territory around the Zaporizhzhia plant, according to a letter posted the IAEA website.
The Russian letter to the IAEA said personnel at the plant continued their “work on providing nuclear safety and monitoring radiation in normal mode of operation. The radiation levels remain normal.”
It’s the not first nuclear reaction under threat from the Russian invasion. On the first day of the assault, Russian forces seized control of the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, according to Ukrainian officials.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant reactor exploded in 1986, when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union — sparking a disaster that affected, directly or indirectly, 9 million people, due to radioactive materials released into the atmosphere.
The IAEA said Ukraine had informed it that staff held at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant since Russian military forces took control of the site a week ago were facing “psychological pressure and moral exhaustion,” according to an IAEA statement.
In a joint appeal to the international nuclear watchdog, the Ukrainian government, regulatory authority and national operator said staff at the facility must be allowed to rest and rotate so that their crucial work can be carried out safely and securely.
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CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Sam Fossum, Julia Hollingsworth, Pete Muntean, Travis Caldwell, Steve Almasy, Akanksha Sharma, Masha Angelova, Hira Humayun and Philip Wang contributed to this report.
