Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Safety at Its Worst, IAEA Warns
The safety situation at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is the most precarious of the war, the UN atomic watchdog warned, after the site lost all external power three times in a week and was forced to run on emergency diesel generators. It follows a drone strike that killed a worker at a staff bus stop. The agency’s head, Rafael Grossi, again urged restraint around Europe’s largest nuclear facility.
A nuclear plant needs a reliable power supply to cool its reactors even when shut down, and the repeated loss of off-site power, leaving Zaporizhzhia dependent on diesel generators of last resort, is exactly the scenario nuclear engineers dread. Captured by Russia in March 2022 and fought over ever since, the plant has become a slow-motion hazard the world has grown numbly used to, even as the margins for error shrink. Each fresh incident, from shelling to drone strikes to grid failures, chips away at the safety systems designed to prevent a release of radiation. The IAEA can monitor the plant but not protect it. Watch whether power is restored and stabilised, and whether either side heeds the warnings.