As the crisis at the Zaporizhzhia plant worsens, international agreements need to be extended to ensure nuclear safety during war.
Credit: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
The powers of the IAEA are limited. It has responded in a rapid and principled way to the crisis in Ukraine, after being unable to prevent the Fukushima disaster following the Tohoku earthquake in Japan in 2011. But the international Convention on Nuclear Safety — one of several treaties that the IAEA serves to reinforce — was never designed to grapple with the nightmare of nuclear-power stations coming under military attack.
Russian control of the plant also delayed the IAEA from conducting its required annual inspection, which is crucial for ensuring safety and verifying the secure disposal of nuclear fuel and preventing its diversion for military usesNuclear-power plants elsewhere in Ukraine are also under threat. Shelling has been reported at the Khmelnytskyy plant in Netishyn, and cruise missiles have overflown the South Ukraine plant in Yuzhnoukrainsk.
Given the old designs of many nuclear plants and the large amounts of waste in above-ground storage, such concerns will persist for decades as the conflict landscape changes.United Nations and IAEA leaders have begun to discuss what needs to be done. Soon after the war in Ukraine began, the IAEA published ‘seven pillars’ of nuclear safety in armed conflict.
The conference’s failure is only one facet of the unprecedented challenge to the global governance of nuclear safety posed by the crisis. International law is gravely inadequate, and the IAEA’s proposed responses are untested. The IAEA’s call for the demilitarization of the Zaporizhzhia site is consistent with the Geneva Conventions and should be enacted urgently. A ‘nuclear safety and security protection zone’ is a more complex matter.
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