Russian drone strikes cause blackout at Chornobyl nuclear plant

Russian forces launched drone attacks at the city of Slavutych that targeted facilities of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant on Oct.1. The strike caused a blackout that lasted more than three hours, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported.

The outage affected the new confinement shelter and spent nuclear fuel storage facility, which holds 80 percent of all spent fuel from the plant’s operation that is the equivalent of 3,250 tons. 

Those facilities are used to protect the surrounding environment from the remnants of Reactor 4 and radioactive debris and dust following the 1986 explosion that the Soviet Union initially tried to cover up.

“The Russians could not have been unaware that striking facilities in Slavutych would have such consequences for Chornobyl. And this was a deliberate strike, involving more than 20 drones — preliminary estimates indicate Russian-Iranian “shaheds,” Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine’s air defense managed to shoot down some of the drones, but “the attack was specifically executed as a wave to complicate the facility’s defense,” the president said.

Zelenskyy also said that the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest, has been in blackout for eight days due to a Russian attack.

“The Russians are doing absolutely nothing to rectify the situation or allow Ukrainian specialists to restore external power to the ZNPP, which should normally operate continuously,” he said.

He added that Russia is deliberately creating the risk of a radiation incident, taking advantage of “the weak stance of the IAEA and Director General Rafael Grossi, as well as the dispersed global attention.”

“Half-hearted or weak measures will not fix the situation. […] It is crucial that European countries, the United States, and the G7 and G20 nations take real action for peace and security to the fullest extent possible,” Zelenskyy said.

Earlier, the European Union called on Russia to immediately halt all military actions around the occupied Zaporizhzhia plant, amid the longest blackout at the facility since the start of the full-scale war.