Current:Home > NewsAs Russia hits Ukraine's energy facilities with a deadly missile attack, fear mounts over nuclear plants -文件: temp/data/webname/news/nam2.txt
As Russia hits Ukraine's energy facilities with a deadly missile attack, fear mounts over nuclear plants
View
Date:2025-04-18 20:43:07
A "massive" Russian missile attack on at least six cities across Ukraine killed at least two people and left more than 20 others wounded Thursday night, Ukrainian officials said. Ukrenergo, the country's electrical grid operator, said on social media that the missile barrage was Russia's first successful attack targeting energy facilities in months, and it reported partial blackouts in five different regions across the country.
"Tonight, Russia launched a massive attack on Ukraine," deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office Oleksiy Kuleba said, warning that "difficult months are ahead" for the country as "Russia will attack energy and critically important facilities."
The strike came as Ukraine's frigid winter months approach and just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cautioned at the United Nations General Assembly that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was not afraid of weaponizing nuclear power.
- Political divide emerges on Ukraine aid as Zelenskyy heads to D.C.
Zelenskyy warned from the U.N. podium that if Russia is allowed to win the war in Ukraine, other countries will be next.
"The mass destruction is gaining momentum," he said. "The aggressor is weaponizing many other things and those things are used not only against our country, but against all of yours as well."
One of those weapons, Zelenskyy said, is nuclear energy, and the greatest threat is at the sprawling Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine, which has been occupied by Russian forces for more than a year.
For several months, Ukraine's counteroffensive has been partly focused on liberating territory around the facility, amid fear that Moscow could deliberately cause a radiation leak there to use as a false pretext for further aggression.
For 18 months, the ground around the massive complex, and even Europe's largest nuclear power plant itself, has repeatedly been targeted in missile and drone attacks. The clashes around the sensitive site have drawn dire warnings from the United Nations nuclear energy watchdog as engineers have had to regularly take its six reactors offline and rely on backup power to keep the plant safely cooled.
Ukraine remains heavily dependent on nuclear energy. It has three other plants still under its direct control which, combined, power more than half the country. That makes them too important to shut down, despite the risks of Russian attacks.
But until now, only Moscow was capable of providing fuel for Ukraine's Soviet-era nuclear reactors. So, as part of a wider strategy by Kyiv to sever any reliance on Russia, Ukraine partnered with the Pittsburgh-based company Westinghouse to develop its own fueling systems to power its plants. The first such system was installed this month at the Rivne plant.
The plant is now being fired by fuel produced at a Westinghouse plant in Sweden.
Ukraine's Minster of Energy, Hermann Galuschenko, told CBS News it's a shift that was a long time coming. He said it gave him pride to see nuclear fuel being fed in to power the reactors recently at the Rivne plant for the first time under the new system.
"I'm proud that even during the war, we managed to do some historical things," he said. "We should get rid of Russian technologies in nuclear."
Ukraine is still haunted by the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. One of the worst man-made catastrophes in history, the Chernobyl meltdown left millions of acres of forest and farmland contaminated and caused devastating long-term health problems for thousands of people in the region.
As Ukrainian forces battle to push Russia out of Zaporizhzhia, the lingering fear is that the Kremlin could be preparing to sabotage that nuclear power plant with mines or other military explosives.
- In:
- War
- Nuclear Power Plant
- Ukraine
- Russia
- United Nations
- Nuclear Attack
- Vladimir Putin
- Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Imtiaz Tyab is a CBS News correspondent based in London.
TwitterveryGood! (459)
Related
- Tony Hawk drops in on Paris skateboarding and pushes for more styles of sport in LA 2028
- Former longtime South Carolina congressman John Spratt dies at 82
- Charges tied to China weigh on GM in Q4, but profit and revenue top expectations
- Louvre will undergo expansion and restoration project, Macron says
- A steeplechase record at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Then a proposal. (He said yes.)
- Dick Vitale announces he is cancer free: 'Santa Claus came early'
- 'We're reborn!' Gazans express joy at returning home to north
- Nearly 400 USAID contract employees laid off in wake of Trump's 'stop work' order
- Residents worried after ceiling cracks appear following reroofing works at Jalan Tenaga HDB blocks
- Appeals court scraps Nasdaq boardroom diversity rules in latest DEI setback
Ranking
- Whoopi Goldberg is delightfully vile as Miss Hannigan in ‘Annie’ stage return
- Juan Soto to be introduced by Mets at Citi Field after striking record $765 million, 15
- What do we know about the mysterious drones reported flying over New Jersey?
- 'We're reborn!' Gazans express joy at returning home to north
- Taylor Swift Cancels Austria Concerts After Confirmation of Planned Terrorist Attack
- Don't let hackers fool you with a 'scam
- McKinsey to pay $650 million after advising opioid maker on how to 'turbocharge' sales
- Stamford Road collision sends motorcyclist flying; driver arrested
Recommendation
What polling shows about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ new running mate
Jamie Foxx reps say actor was hit in face by a glass at birthday dinner, needed stitches
B.A. Parker is learning the banjo
The company planning a successor to Concorde makes its first supersonic test
NCAA hits former Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh with suspension, show-cause for recruiting violations
Are Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp down? Meta says most issues resolved after outages
Nearly half of US teens are online ‘constantly,’ Pew report finds
DeepSeek: Did a little known Chinese startup cause a 'Sputnik moment' for AI?