International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, shown here in June 2024, is leading a monitoring mission to the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant to assess the risk of a nuclear accident. (International Atomic Energy Agency)
Monitors from the United Nations atomic watchdog said Rosatom Corp. is elevating the risk of a radiological emergency by continuing to operate a nuclear power plant on Russian soil that’s near territory seized by Ukraine this month.
“The fact that the plant is operating makes it even more serious,” International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Tuesday in comments broadcast by Russian state television.
The IAEA monitoring mission led by Grossi visited the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant to assess the risk of a nuclear accident. Unlike Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, where all six reactors have been shut down, Kursk continues generating electricity.
The agency warned of particularly “serious consequences” if the fueled core of a so-called RBMK reactor were hit while in operation. Impacts from attack drones were observed on site, according to Grossi, who didn’t specify which side fired them.
“A nuclear power plant of this type so close to the military front is an extremely serious fact,” Grossi said, describing the site as “exposed and fragile.”
The Soviet-era technology currently operating on the site is particularly vulnerable to a Chernobyl-like accident if hit by artillery or rocket fire. The RBMK technology operating in Kursk uses the same outdated Soviet design that exploded in Chernobyl. Unlike modern units, it doesn’t have the steel and concrete containment domes that back up core safety systems and are designed to contain radiation in the event of an accident.
That key safety-design weakness means that no country outside of Russia operates RBMK power plants.
The IAEA visited the site in an effort to calm nuclear concerns as Russia’s war with Ukraine reaches the 2½-year mark. Diplomats at the Vienna-based agency have issued urgent warnings about a radiological incident — one that could harm efforts to raise atomic generation to mitigate climate change.
Russia, the world’s biggest exporter of nuclear fuel and technology, told diplomats this month that an attack could wreck the global industry. Rosatom officials were expected to show the IAEA evidence of what they say were Ukrainian drone and rocket attacks in the vicinity of the Kursk plant.
“The major concern right now is an accidental military strike,” said Robert Kelley, a former IAEA director and emergency-response coordinator at the US Department of Energy. “The worst case scenario is a radiation release that is more than what happened at Fukushima but vastly less than at Chernobyl.”
The 1986 Chernobyl meltdown left a 1,000 square-mile exclusion zone in Ukraine, where radioactive material will take thousands of years to decay. Unlike the 2011 meltdowns in Fukushima, Japan, where operators largely kept large volumes of radiation from spreading into the atmosphere, the Chernobyl disaster wafted plumes over a wide swathe of Europe.
Risks to nuclear safety at the Kursk plant underscore the new pressure bearing on Russian President Vladimir Putin since Ukraine’s surprise incursion began earlier this month. Putin started the war when he ordered the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which was meant to end within days.
For its part, Ukraine’s government has accused Russia of plotting a radiological emergency. IAEA diplomats said Monday that remnants of Russian attack drones were discovered last week near its South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant.
Despite the IAEA having an on-the-ground presence at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, as well as four other stations in Ukraine, Grossi said his inspectors haven’t found conclusive evidence pointing to who’s behind drone attacks targeting Europe’s biggest atomic station.
The two operational RBMK reactors in Kursk were both built before the Chernobyl meltdown, according to the IAEA’s PRIS database. The units are scheduled to continue generating electricity for another six years, unless Russia opts to extend their operating lifetime.
Rosatom is building another pair of modern VVER reactors at the Kursk site which are scheduled to come online next year with a combined 2 gigawatts of capacity. Both of those units have built-in secondary containment structures to guard against accident.
Even without hitting one of Kursk’s operational RBMKs and provoking a radiological emergency, Ukraine’s forces could deal an expensive blow to Russia’s nuclear industry. “Just knocking out a generator hall could cause millions of dollars damage and an extensive delay,” Kelley said.
With assistance from Henry Meyer.
