Two waves of drone and missile attacks last month damaged power lines, forcing Kyiv to reduce output at nine reactors which provide the majority of the country's remaining power generation capacity.
“The risk of a catastrophic incident is real and growing, which will undoubtedly have a lasting impact on both Russia and Ukraine and the surrounding region,” Bloomberg quotes Laura Holgate, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA.
“Yet the Kremlin continues to ignore nuclear safety.”
Ukraine has warned Western partners that airstrikes on electrical substations are pushing its energy infrastructure toward collapse. While Ukraine has thousands of substations, officials are concerned about several key nodes connected to nuclear facilities. Their destruction could plunge the country into a blackout and trigger a nuclear emergency, Ukraine's Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko told the journalists.
Meanwhile, the European Union stated that Russian strikes have "significantly increased the risk of a nuclear accident, which could have severe radiation consequences for human health and the environment, including a global food hazard if agricultural land is contaminated."