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.
In a statement late on Sunday evening, the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) wrote on social media that its experts “witnessed strong dark smoke coming from the ZNPP’s northern area following multiple explosions heard in the evening,” referring to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
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.”
Reports sent to the IAEA indicated that an alleged drone struck the power plant, which is located in southeastern Ukraine and is considered the largest nuclear plant in Europe, over the past weekend, the U.N. agency said in a longer statement.
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.”
“Since the first day of its seizure, Russia has been using the Zaporizhzhia NPP only to blackmail Ukraine, all of Europe, and the world,” he continued.
But the plant’s director, Yuriy Chernichuk, who was installed by the Russian government, said in a statement carried by state-run Ria Novosti that a Ukrainian drone carrying a flammable liquid struck the plant.
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.
After Russia took control of the plant, there have been calls for Moscow to return its ownership to Ukraine. Last month, the United Nations adopted a resolution to have Russia cede control “immediately” to Ukrainian authorities “to ensure its safety and security,” a news release said.
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.
The nuclear plant fire came as Zelenskyy confirmed Saturday that Ukrainian forces are fighting inside Russia, coming as Moscow and independent monitors have said that troops have penetrated inside the Russian territory of Kursk located near the border.
Although he did not specifically say Ukrainian forces were responsible for the Kursk attacks, Zelenskyy said in a nightly address Kyiv forces are now attempting “to push the war out into the aggressor’s territory,” according to a transcript.
“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.
The IAEA also sounded a separate alarm over the renewed fighting in Kursk, saying that they are within close proximity to the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in Russia.
From The Epoch Times