Swiss minister to chair UN meeting on Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

Fighting near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine has repeatedly disrupted power supplies and has fuelled fears of a potential catastrophe like the one at Chernobyl. Keystone / Yuri Kochetkov

The United Nations Security Council will meet on Tuesday to discuss protection of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe. Switzerland is due to chair the special session.

The meeting is aimed at encouraging the parties involved to comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear safety principles in order to avoid a nuclear catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the Swiss foreign ministry said in a statementExternal link on Monday.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi is due to brief the council on the current situation and present the principles for ensuring safety on site.

The foreign ministry said Grossi had led efforts aimed at securing the protection of the plant during the conflict, “engaging in months of intense negotiations with both Ukraine and Russia to prevent a potentially severe nuclear accident”.

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It added that “the safety of civilian nuclear power plants in conflict regions is a key issue for Switzerland”.

“Combat operations are a direct threat to the nuclear power plant, and a nuclear accident would have far-reaching humanitarian and environmental consequences not only for Ukraine but also for the European continent,” the Swiss ministry said.

Nuclear safety in Ukraine and the situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant have been discussed several times at the Security Council since the onset of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Ukraine’s military intelligence claimed this weekend, without offering evidence, that Russia is plotting a “large-scale provocation” at the nuclear power plant it occupies in the southeast of the country with the aim of disrupting a looming Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The Zaporizhzhia power plant is one of the ten biggest nuclear plants in the world. It is in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region in south-eastern Ukraine. The plant’s six reactors have been shut down for months, but it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.

Fighting near it repeatedly disrupted power supplies and has fuelled fears of a potential catastrophe like the one at Chernobyl, in northern Ukraine, where a reactor exploded in 1986 and spewed deadly radiation, contaminating a vast area in the world’s worst nuclear disaster.