After a week of combat, Russian troops are fighting at the gates of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the second-largest nuclear power plant in Europe, and one of the 10 largest nuclear power plants in the world. With Russian troops poised to take control of Zaporizhzhia’s six VVER-1000 pressurized water reactors, Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered no assurance that Russia is prepared to assume safe stewardship of Ukraine’s substantial civilian nuclear infrastructure.
Russia’s slovenly logistical support for the Ukraine invasion casts doubt on whether the Kremlin has prepared for a lengthy and contested occupation. This, coupled with the complete failure of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, to move quickly to question Russia’s readiness and administrative intentions for Ukraine’s civilian nuclear infrastructure, could have serious regional—and potentially global—fallout.
While various Russian representatives—for now—appear to be communicating with the IAEA and trying to avoid inflicting unnecessary combat damage to Ukraine’s nuclear power infrastructure, Russia’s nuclear contingency planning and administrative failures are already on full display. A week after overrunning the closed Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Russia has yet to provide sufficient staff to safely support the captured facility, relying on captured Ukrainian personnel instead.
It is a dire situation. At the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the same set of Ukrainian workers have been at their posts since February 24, trapped in place when Russian forces first closed in. Ukraine’s nuclear managers said Wednesday in a statement that Chernobyl personnel “have been detained by the Russian military without rotation for seven days,” and “have limited opportunities to communicate, move and carry out full-fledged routine and repair work.”
This is unacceptable.
Russia’s inability or unwillingness to support basic functions at, what is, essentially, a cleanup site, where reactors have been retired or entombed, is a worrying sign that Russia may not have the means to safely operate any of the 15 active nuclear reactors it stands to take in the Ukraine. Even more worryingly, as fighting began in Enerhodar, home to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Russia’s staffing challenges at Chernobyl suggest Vladimir Putin has absolutely no means to manage or alleviate an operational crisis within the more “critical” parts of Ukraine’s civil nuclear power infrastructure.
The situation is extremely dangerous. Ukraine counts on nuclear power, and with at least half of Ukraine’s nuclear reactors operating at full capacity, those reactors will be particularly vulnerable to operational disruptions. With the stakes so high, operators will be tempted to accept more risk, unwilling to shut down until the last possible second—when it may be too late to avoid a nuclear catastrophe.
IAEA Was Far Too Slow To Respond
The total failure of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, to raise wider awareness of the dangers posed by warfare near Ukraine’s nuclear facilities is a serious oversight. The independent agency is mandated to “accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world,” but it has done very little to build awareness of the threat modern combat poses to civilian nuclear infrastructure.
The IAEA’s reluctance to look into the abyss of full-scale conventional combat near civil nuclear power infrastructure is somewhat understandable. From the very beginning, civilian nuclear power has always been about accentuating the positive and minimizing any negatives. And while the IAEA has been better than most about focusing world attention on some ugly nuclear contingencies—using their technical programs to help mitigate a range of security and operational challenges—IAEA has been far too willing to dismiss the idea that war between countries with active civilian nuclear infrastructure was a real hazard.
Operating from a cozy headquarters in Vienna Austria, a distracted, overly cautious IAEA has avoided the issue of war in nuclear-powered states almost entirely. It has done little of consequence since 2009, when it “adopted a decision” that said, “any armed attack on and threat against nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes constitutes a violation of the principles of the United Nations Charter, international law and the Statute of the Agency,” reaffirming similar resolutions from 1985 and 1990.
The IAEA has also done far too little to either understand how nuclear facilities might best survive a conventional war or to reconsider the IAEA’s role in focusing awareness on such activities. The timid, conflict-averse agency has failed to examine how civilian nuclear power facilities can be kept safe during a grinding, longer-term conflict—where outside resources may be critical in averting a regional nuclear catastrophe.
And now, with 15 operating nuclear reactors in a war zone, IAEA is looking down the barrel of a crisis.
In the two months after I warned in Forbes that Ukraine’s 15 reactors were at risk, the IAEA did nothing. The organization only began issuing regular statements on the Ukraine situation on February 24, the day Putin widened the Ukraine conflict. And it is inexplicable that the IAEA director waited until Russian troops were assaulting the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to even articulate IAEA’s operational expectations for securing nuclear power plants during a military conflict.
IAEA Needs To Build Up Operational Support Infrastructure
After a slow start, the IAEA is moving forward, providing regular updates, and serving, as best it can, as a negotiator and information provider. It has offered a few anodyne statements about how “any military or other action that could threaten the safety or security of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants must be avoided,” but, beyond that, the organization is doing little more than some diplomatic fretting over their cappuccinos.
This must change. Russia has already threatened EU states that operate nuclear reactors. Finland, Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia all maintain civil nuclear power plants, and all are in acute danger if the present conflict extends further into Europe.
Going forward, contributing states must fund and the IAEA mandate must permit a more proactive stance by the independent agency, allowing it to organize contingency teams, independently demand ceasefires and propose concepts of operations for military operations near threatened power plants. The IAEA must have a viable means to ensure the physical integrity of threatened nuclear power facilities, compelling combatants to provide for staff, safety and security systems, power supplies, logistical support and outside communications. It must also revise planning assumptions for future nuclear power plants, offering larger safety margins.
Leadership priorities must be shifted as well. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi should be supplemented or replaced with an active, technical person more attuned to the operational requirements at hand. Grossi, a long-time diplomat, is a mild-mannered product of the globe’s rather cozy cadre of non-proliferation and disarmament leaders—a relatively ineffective bunch who are far more comfortable navigating problems via the rubber-chicken diplomatic circuit than in getting out ahead of gritty, emergent challenges.
