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chernobyl
New Worries at Chernobyl After IAEA Finds Radiation Shield Has 'Lost Primary Safety Functions'
"Timely and comprehensive restoration remains essential to prevent further degradation and ensure long-term nuclear safety," said IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi.
Dec 08, 2025
A protective shield built over the remains of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine is no longer capable of blocking radiation, the International Atomic Energy Agency warned late last week.
In a statement published on Friday, the IAEA said that its researchers have confirmed that the New Safe Confinement (NSC) shield has "lost its primary safety functions," including the ability to confine radiation, after it was damaged by a Russian drone strike in February.
On the positive side, the researchers found "no permanent damage" to the system's load-bearing structures and monitoring systems. Nonetheless, IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said that urgent work needed to be done to rebuild the shield.
"Limited temporary repairs have been carried out on the roof, but timely and comprehensive restoration remains essential to prevent further degradation and ensure long-term nuclear safety," he emphasized.
Grossi noted that IAEA had a permanent team working at the site and vowed that the agency "will continue to do everything it can to support efforts to fully restore nuclear safety and security at the Chernobyl site."
Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace, told the New York Times that the damage caused to the NSC isn't cause for immediate concern, although that would change if the damage to the shield went without repairs for a long period of time.
"If there was to be some event inside the shelter that would release radioactive materials into the space inside the New Safe Confinement, because this facility is no longer sealed to the outside environment, there’s the potential for radiation to come out," said Burnie. "I have to say I don’t think that’s a particularly serious issue at the moment, because they’re not actively decommissioning the actual sarcophagus."
The NSC was first put into place in 2016 to enclose the emergency sarcophagus over Chernobyl's number 4 nuclear reactor that was constructed by Soviet officials in the wake of the 1986 disaster at the nuclear plant.
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Tensions in Ukraine Show Why 'Nuclear Power Is the Most Dangerous Way to Boil Water'
"Calling for a no-fire zone around Zaporizhzhia is not enough," said Beyond Nuclear. "We must call for no nuclear power at all."
Jul 06, 2023
With Ukrainian and Russian officials trading accusations about a possible looming attack on Europe's largest nuclear power plant this week, global experts and campaigners are sharing fresh concerns about the facility and the energy source more broadly.
Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and took control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) the following month. Since then, fighting near the facility—with six reactors that are currently shut down—has generated fears around the world and controversial references to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the site of which is located in present-day Ukraine.
In recent days, an adviser to Russia's nuclear agency has claimed Ukraine will imminently cause a nuclear disaster at the ZNPP while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned of a potential false flag operation, claiming that "the Russian military has placed objects resembling explosives on the roof of several power units."
While International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts at the facility have so far not observed any visible indications of mines or explosives, the new accusations led the United Nations watchdog on Wednesday to request additional access—specifically to the rooftops of two reactors along with parts of the turbine halls and cooling system.
"With military tension and activities increasing in the region where this major nuclear power plant is located, our experts must be able to verify the facts on the ground," said IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi. "Their independent and objective reporting would help clarify the current situation at the site, which is crucial at a time like this with unconfirmed allegations and counterallegations."
"In a time of national crises in multiple countries, increasing natural disasters, and a worsening climate emergency, nuclear power is demonstrating that it is a liability rather than an asset."
The U.S.-based group Beyond Nuclear noted in a lengthy statement Thursday that "Zaporizhzhia is in the news now almost every day. The propaganda may be deliberately alarmist, but the basis for the alarm is very real or it would not be the subject matter for headline-getting in the first place."
"The reason is simple. Nuclear power is the most dangerous way to boil water. It is unnecessary, expensive, and an obstacle to renewable energy development," the group argued. "It is time to see sense. Calling for a no-fire zone around Zaporizhzhia is not enough. We must call for no nuclear power at all."
Highlighting that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is far from the only threat to the world's nuclear facilities, the group added that "in a time of national crises in multiple countries, increasing natural disasters, and a worsening climate emergency, nuclear power is demonstrating that it is a liability rather than an asset."
Beyond Nuclear also weighed in on the intense debate among activists, Ukrainian and Russian officials, reporters, scientists, and others regarding the dangers of a nuclear disaster at the ZNPP, offering a list of unanswered questions:
- Has the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in fact been wired for detonation and whose interests would be served by blowing up the plant?
- Why is there an exodus of both Russian and Ukrainian plant personnel?
- Will the sabotage of the downstream Kakhovka dam that resulted in catastrophic flooding also lead to an equally catastrophic loss of available cooling water supplies for the reactors and fuel pools?
- Will the backup diesel generators, frequently turned to for powering the essential cooling each time the plant has lost connection to the electricity grid, last through each crisis, given their fuel must also be replenished, potentially not possible under war conditions?
"None of these threats would make headlines if Zaporizhzhia was instead home to a wind farm or utility-scale solar array," asserted Beyond Nuclear. "This perhaps explains the rush now to downplay the gravity of the situation, with claims in the press that a major attack on the plant would 'not be as bad as Chernobyl' and that radioactive releases would be minimal and barely travel beyond the fence line. This is an irresponsible dismissal of the real dangers."
As the group detailed:
After the massive explosion at Chernobyl, the graphite moderator used in the reactor fueled the fire, with the smoke further lofting radioactive fallout far and wide. This has led to an assumption that major fires and explosions at Zaporizhzhia would result in less serious consequences since the reactor designs are not the same as Chernobyl's.
However, if the uranium fuel in the Zaporizhzhia reactors or irradiated fuel storage pools overheats and ignites, it could then heat up the zirconium cladding around it, which would ignite and burn fiercely as a flare at temperatures too hot to extinguish with water. The resulting chemical reaction would also generate an explosive environment. The heat of the release and detonation(s) could breach concrete structures, then loft radioactive gas and fallout into the environment to travel on the weather.
Fallout could contaminate crucial agricultural land, potentially indefinitely, and would include Russia, should prevailing winds travel eastward at the time of the disaster.
Some have suggested that an attack on the plant would not seriously threaten surrounding communities. The American Nuclear Society, for example, said Wednesday that "our experts have carefully considered 'worst-case scenarios,' including bombardment and deliberate sabotage of the reactors and spent fuel storage canisters. They cannot foresee a situation that would result in radiation-related health consequences to the public."
"ZNPP's six reactors have been shut down for over 10 months and are no longer making enough heat to cause a prompt radiological release," the society said. "ZNPP is designed to withstand natural and manmade hazards. Thick, steel-reinforced concrete containment buildings protect the reactor cores and are designed to keep any radioactive materials isolated from the environment."
"In the unlikely event that containment structures were breached, any potential release of radiological material would be restricted to the immediate area surrounding the reactors. In this regard, any comparison between ZNPP and 'Chernobyl' or 'Fukushima' is both inaccurate and misleading," the group added, referencing the 2011 disaster in Japan.
Matthew Bunn, the James R. Schlesinger professor of the practice of energy, national security, and foreign policy at Harvard Kennedy School, made the case at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Thursday that the biggest danger regarding the ZNPP is intentional sabotage.
"How serious is the risk of a major radioactive disaster?" Bunn wrote. "That depends on whether we're talking about an intentional or inadvertent radioactive release. If the Russian forces that control the site want to cause a major radiation release—and are willing to use explosives to do it—they could contaminate a huge area. Although the reactors have been largely shut down and cooling for months, they still contain a huge amount of intensely radioactive material that explosives could disperse."
He continued:
A couple of mines on the roof of a reactor would not be enough. Causing a big release would require some serious demolition with explosives. But that's what was needed to destroy Ukraine's Kakhovka dam—which it appears was done with explosives from within, while Russian forces controlled the site—so a similar operation at Zaporizhzhia can't be ruled out.
No one can accurately evaluate how big an area might be affected; the extent of contamination would depend on how the disaster was caused, how hard the wind was blowing, whether rain brought the radioactive material back to the ground, and more. But one could easily imagine that Russia might hope that such a release would interfere with Ukraine's counteroffensive, forcing some units to focus on evacuating people and cleaning up radioactive fallout rather than battling Russian forces.
By contrast, looking only at inadvertent damage, there are reasons to be optimistic. The Zaporizhzhia reactors are built with thick concrete containment structures, have been cooling for months, and have extra safety features installed after the Fukushima accident in Japan. It is very unlikely that a few stray shells from fighting in the area would cause any serious radioactive release.
Bunn concluded that "over the longer term, there's a need to rethink nuclear safety and security in the context of the possibility that nuclear facilities can be exposed to war, mass civil unrest, or governmental collapse. And there's a need for new agreements to reduce the chance that major civilian nuclear facilities under international inspection will again be targets of military assault."
Meanwhile, Beyond Nuclear charged that "if Zaporizhzhia comes to harm, each side in the conflict will likely hold the other responsible. But ultimately, the responsibility we all share is to reject the continued use of a technology that has the potential to wreak such disastrous consequences on humanity."
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'A Meltdown Could Still Happen,' Experts Warn as Fighting Around Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Intensifies
"The consequences not only for the people of Ukraine and neighboring Russia, but for all of Europe, should any or all of these reactors melt down or suffer a fuel pool fire are unimaginably dire."
May 11, 2023
Experts are warning ahead of an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive against invading Russian forces that continued fighting heightens the risk of a continent-wide calamity emanating from the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant—and necessitates immediate efforts to negotiate a ceasefire followed by a peace treaty to end the war.
Ukraine's state-owned atomic energy company, Energoatom, said Wednesday that Russia intends to relocate roughly 3,100 people from the city of Enerhodar—2,700 of whom work at the Zaporizhzhia plant in Russia-controlled southern Ukraine—and warned that such a move would lead to a "catastrophic lack of qualified personnel."
Since March 2022, Europe's largest nuclear facility has been held by Russian troops and operated by a mostly Ukrainian workforce, with periodic escalations in fighting around the plant resulting in repeated losses of offsite power that threaten to cause a disastrous meltdown.
The evacuation plan, which applies to roughly half of the plant's 6,000 employees, was prompted by fears of an imminent Ukrainian campaign to reclaim lost territory, including in Zaporizhzhia, one of four regions illegally annexed by Russia. It comes just days after a Moscow-installed official said that more than 1,600 civilians had been evacuated from areas near the plant.
As local civilian evacuations began last weekend amid intensified shelling, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general Rafael Grossi expressed concerns about the "increasingly tense, stressful, and challenging conditions" faced by Zaporizhzhia plant staff and warned of an "increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous" situation unfolding.
"A major assault on Zaporizhzhia, or even a prolonged loss of power, could lead to a catastrophe that would dwarf the impact of Chernobyl."
The head of the United Nations' nuclear power watchdog, who has spent months trying to persuade Russian and Ukrainian officials to establish a demilitarized zone around the site, called for immediate action "to prevent the threat of a severe nuclear accident and its associated consequences for the population and the environment."
Although all six nuclear reactors at the Zaporizhzhia plant have been shut down since September, they still require a constant supply of electricity to keep spent nuclear fuel rods cool and prevent a meltdown of the kind that devastated Chernobyl, roughly 400 miles away, some 37 years ago.
On Monday, the Moscow-installed governor of the Russia-controlled part of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region reportedly suspended operations at the plant. According to The Associated Press, "Russians have laid minefields around the plant and built defensive positions."
In a Wednesday statement, Beyond Nuclear said that just because "all six Zaporizhzhia reactors are currently shut down... does not mean they are out of danger."
"The fuel in the reactor core still requires electricity to power cooling, as do the pumps that supply cooling water to the fuel pools," said the group's international specialist, Linda Pentz Gunter. "A meltdown is still possible. Putting the reactors in what is termed 'cold shutdown' just buys workers more time to restore power, but a reliable supply of electricity to the site is still essential to avoid disaster."
"It is time for the United States to step up efforts toward a negotiated peace agreement rather than helping to prolong a likely unwinnable war."
"The consequences not only for the people of Ukraine and neighboring Russia, but for all of Europe, should any or all of these reactors melt down or suffer a fuel pool fire are unimaginably dire," Gunter warned.
"We only have to look at the fallout map from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, a single unit with a far smaller radioactive inventory, to understand the potential scale of such a tragedy," she added.
Experts have repeatedly sounded the alarm about the growing risk of a continental-scale catastrophe, noting that the Zaporizhzhia plant contains more radioactive waste than was present at Chernobyl when it exploded.
That nuclear accident in what is now Ukraine "contaminated 40% of the European landmass with long-lived radioactive fallout," Beyond Nuclear pointed out. The meltdown rendered an area of more than 1,000 square miles uninhabitable and caused the illnesses and deaths of potentially hundreds of thousands of people.
"A major assault on Zaporizhzhia, or even a prolonged loss of power, could lead to a catastrophe that would dwarf the impact of Chernobyl," said Gunter.
"Despite the seeming entrenchment from both Ukraine and Russia, it is time for the United States to step up efforts toward a negotiated peace agreement rather than helping to prolong a likely unwinnable war," she added. "The stakes are simply too high."
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