The Ukrainian drone that caused a blaze inside one of the cooling towers of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) appears to have carried a special incendiary liquid intended to spread fire more rapidly, the facility’s director, Yury Chernichuk, has claimed.
The cooling towers, which perform the important function of removing excess heat from nuclear reactors, came under attack on Sunday evening. The fire did not compromise the structural integrity of the massive concrete construction, which is over a 100m tall, but certain plastic elements inside were destroyed, Chernichuk told journalists on Monday.
The drone, he said, “entered the tower from above and detonated.” Judging by how fast the fire spread, the official presumes that it carried something such as petroleum or napalm. “The fire spread very fast over a large area,” he added.
Chernichuk said that an assessment was being carried out to determine how long it will take to repair the tower. Monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, were given a tour of the location, Chernichuk added.
The ZNPP is located in the city of Energodar in Russia's Zaporozhye Region, although Kiev claims sovereignty over the region. The two cooling towers were erected near a cooling pond outside of the main perimeter of the plant.
As a precaution, the Russian managers of the facility have put all six of its reactors into a cold shutdown, which means that the loss of the tower poses no imminent threat. The Ukrainian military has regularly launched attacks on Energodar, some of which have directly impacted the nuclear site, according to Russian officials.
Aleksey Likhachov, the head of Russian state nuclear monopoly Rosatom, has called the latest incident unprecedented.
“This level of targeted aggression against the infrastructure of an atomic facility – that never happened before,” he said on Monday.
The IAEA, which maintains a team of observers at the site, has condemned the escalation of risky behavior but without attributing it to Ukraine.
“These reckless attacks endanger nuclear safety at the plant and increase the risk of a nuclear accident. They must stop now,” Director General Rafael Grossi said on Sunday.
The UN agency has declined to identify the perpetrators, citing the limits of its mandate and the need to engage both sides of the Ukraine conflict on nuclear safety issues. The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that this policy amounts to obstruction of the truth and “simply inflates Kiev’s sense of impunity.” It urged the IAEA to reconsider its approach.