"The United Nations nuclear watchdog has held a special session on Ukraine amid growing fears that Russian attacks on its energy facilities could trigger a nuclear accident. Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said at the start of Friday's extraordinary board meeting in Vienna that the war in Ukraine posed the world's biggest threat to nuclear safety."
"Although nuclear power plants generate power themselves, they rely on an uninterrupted supply of external power from electrical substations to maintain reactor cooling. Ukraine has four nuclear power plants, three of them under Kyiv's control, with the fourth and biggest in Zaporizhzhia occupied by Russian forces since the early days of their full-scale invasion in 2022. Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accused each other of risking a nuclear catastrophe by attacking the Zaporizhzhia site."
Russian attacks on electrical substations in Ukraine risk cutting external power to nuclear plants, jeopardizing reactor cooling and increasing the chance of a nuclear accident. The International Atomic Energy Agency convened an extraordinary board meeting and conducted an expert mission inspecting ten substations considered vital to nuclear safety. Although reactors can generate electricity, they depend on uninterrupted external supplies and backup lines to sustain cooling and security systems. Ukraine operates four nuclear plants; three under Kyiv's control and the Zaporizhzhia plant occupied by Russian forces with six reactors offline but still requiring power. Damage to backup lines and a struck protective shield at Chornobyl have heightened safety concerns.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
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