(Bloomberg) — Monitors from the United Nations atomic watchdog are preparing to assess the safety situation at a nuclear power plant on Russian soil that’s near territory seized by Ukraine this month in a cross-border incursion.
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The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, arrived at Rosatom Corp’s plant in Russia’s western Kursk region on Tuesday, the state-owned TASS news agency reported. The Soviet-era technology currently operating on the site is particularly vulnerable to a Chernobyl-like accident if hit by artillery or rocket fire, Grossi told Bloomberg Television last week.
The so-called RBMK technology operating at the Kursk plant uses the same outdated Soviet design that exploded in Chernobyl.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 safety and security of nuclear facilities must, under no circumstances, be endangered,” Grossi said in a statement on Monday. “This is an evolving situation.”
The IAEA visit may calm nuclear concerns as Russia’s war with Ukraine reaches the 2 1/2-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 are expected to show the IAEA evidence of what they say were Ukraine 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 2,600 square-kilometer (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 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.
(Adds IAEA arrival in the second, reactor details from the 12th paragraph)
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