Russia’s seizure of Europe’s largest nuclear power facility not only risks nuclear catastrophe, but imperils global nuclear governance. The International Atomic Energy Agency needs support in helping preserve safety, security, and safeguards, and establishing useful governance precedents in unprecedented circumstances.

For the first time a military attack on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine has struck one of its six reactor containment domes. The 7 April incident was only the second attack on the facility itself since November 2022, although there have been multiple attacks on the site since Russian troops seized control of it in the early days of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. These attacks have caused minor damage and inflicted some casualties. But according to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) observers at the scene, the 7 April attack, even though nuclear safety was not compromised, was a serious incident with the potential to undermine the integrity of the reactor’s containment system.

The source of the attack is currently unknown, although it is hard to see what either side would gain from a release of radioactivity from Europe’s largest nuclear facility. Russia is clearly to blame for seizing the plant in the first place and militarising the site, while later deliberately destroying a dam that provided cooling water for the reactors and spent fuel. Russian forces have also intimidated and harassed Ukrainian staff and forced them to work unconscionable hours and in poor conditions to keep the plant running safely.

All of the reactors are now in “cold” shutdown, requiring less cool water for heat removal, and providing a greater margin of error if coolant is lost. Newly installed diesel steam generators provide power, previously provided by one of the reactors, to allow the plant to function, including for the continued treatment of liquid nuclear waste. The plant is operated by Ukrainian staff overseen by officials from Rosatom, the main Russian nuclear agency. Armed Russian troops remain stationed at the site.

The unprecedented seizure of a country’s nuclear power plant by another state has thrown up significant challenges for nuclear governance in all three major areas of concern – nuclear safety (preventing nuclear accidents), security (preventing unauthorised access to nuclear material), and safeguards (preventing non-nuclear weapon states from acquiring nuclear weapons). Surprisingly, little prior thought had been given by the international nuclear community to the possibility of such a scenario.

The key international body responsible for global nuclear governance, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has filled the vacuum valiantly, pushing the boundaries of its mandate into unchartered territory. Its governing body, the Board of Governors, has adopted several resolutions calling on Russia to withdraw its military and other personnel from the ZNPP. In its most recent resolution of 7 March the Board expressed grave concern over “the precarious nuclear safety and security situation at the ZNPP, especially the lack of qualified staff at the site, gaps in routine maintenance activities, the lack of reliable supply chains, the vulnerable status of water and off-site power supply, and the replanting of anti-personnel mines in a buffer zone between the facility’s internal and external fences.”

The IAEA Secretary-General, Rafael Mariano Grossi, and his staff in the Secretariat have been proactive in seeking to avert disaster. They have travelled several times through the battle lines to visit the plant, at considerable personal risk, and taken the unprecedented step of establishing a permanent IAEA Support and Assistance Mission to Zaporizhzhia (ISAMZ) at the site to monitor conditions and provide advice and assistance to the Ukrainian personnel struggling to maintain “normal” operations. This mission, along with those to Ukraine’s other nuclear facilities, permits the Agency and its member states to receive regular updates (233 at last count) on conditions at Zaporizhzhia and elsewhere, along with unprecedentedly comprehensive, consolidated reports on safety, security, and safeguards in a single member state.

In addition, with Ukraine at the forefront but also with an eye to establishing precedents for future similar crises, Director-General Grossi took the initiative early on to set out “Seven Pillars” for ensuring nuclear safety and security in an armed conflict. Although drawing on existing treaties, agreements, and norms, this was the first time such principles had been assembled to address the threat to nuclear facilities in a time of war. In addressing the UN Security Council on 30 May 2023 Grossi also promulgated “five concrete principles” for ensuring safety and security specifically at the ZNPP:

1. There should be no attack of any kind from or against the plant, in particular targeting the reactors, spent fuel storage, other critical infrastructure, or personnel.
2. ZNPP should not be used as storage or a base for heavy weapons (i.e., multiple rocket launchers, artillery systems and munitions, and tanks) or military personnel that could be used for an attack from the plant.
3. Off-site power to the plant should not be put at risk. To that effect, all efforts should be made to ensure that off-site power remains available and secure at all times.
4. All structures, systems and components essential to the safe and secure operation of ZNPP should be protected from attacks or acts of sabotage.
5. No action should be taken that undermines these principles.

Russia’s seizure of Zaporizhzhia and its temporary occupation of the shuttered Chernobyl nuclear power plant, along with attacks on other nuclear installations in Ukraine, demonstrate a shocking contempt for nuclear governance by a permanent member of both the UN Security Council and the IAEA Board, a depository state for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and a major vendor of nuclear reactor technology worldwide. It seems perverse that Rosatom is hawking allegedly safe, secure, and proliferation-resistant reactors to the likes of Bangladesh, Egypt, and Turkey while the Russian military attacks (whether deliberately or accidentally) Russian-built reactors in Ukraine (the same military that cluelessly dug trenches in radioactive fields at Chernobyl, a Soviet disaster site).

In recent years Russian delegations have caused increasing angst at the IAEA, quite apart from the Ukraine case, by unjustifiably questioning the integrity of the safeguards system and the Secretariat’s performance. This is all consistent with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent abandonment of the global nuclear order, including Cold War nuclear arms control accords like the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the Open Skies Agreement and the New START strategic arms limitation treaty, along with his deployment of nuclear weapons in neighbouring client state Belarus and increasingly bellicose rhetoric about the use of nuclear weapons.

In the absence of a broader resolution of the Ukraine/Russia war, the preferred interim solution to the Zaporizhzhia situation would be the complete demilitarisation of the facility and the creation of a substantial demilitarised buffer zone around the site. Director General Grossi has previously proposed such an idea but neither Ukraine nor Russia favours it. The Russians do not wish to jeopardise their irredentist claim to all of Ukraine, while Ukraine naturally wishes to preserve its sovereignty over all of the territory within its pre-war borders (including Crimea). Past international agreements, such as the demilitarised zones between the two Koreas and the two Vietnams, and the “free city” status of Danzig between the two world wars, managed to overcome such difficulties. The current military impasse between Russia and Ukraine appears not ripe enough to permit such a solution, which would be unique for a nuclear facility.

The IAEA can do little in the meantime except help preserve the fragile status quo at the plant, while ensuring that safety, security, and safeguards are implemented as effectively as possible. Australia and other likeminded IAEA member states should offer their full support, including financial contributions, to the Agency’s efforts in Ukraine. It is not just the safety of one country’s nuclear enterprise that is at stake but the future of orderly global nuclear governance.

Dr Trevor Findlay is a Principal Fellow at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne. His research focuses on global nuclear governance, including nuclear safety, security, and nonproliferation, as well as Asia-Pacific regional nuclear governance. His most recent book, Transforming Safeguards Culture: Iraq, the IAEA and the Future of Nonproliferation, was published by MIT Press for Harvard in 2022.

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