Drone reaches Russian nuclear power station cooling tower in Russia

A uN agency indicated on social media that it was informed of the impact, occurred on Thursday morning, without specifying who launched the device or providing details about possible material damage.

The Kursk nuclear power plant is located in western Russia, 90 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, and has four Soviet project reactors.

The IAEA noted that the reactor connected to the cooling tower was operational at the time of the attack and remained active.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi reaffirmed that any attack on nuclear installations “is unacceptable”, regardless of where it occurs, due to the security danger.

Grossi also reiterated the call for maximum military restraint to avoid the risk of a nuclear accident.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine has commented on the information provided by the UN agency.

In July, the governor of the Kursk region accused Ukraine of reaching a cooling tower at the Kursk II nuclear power plant, which is under construction near the original unit, erected in the 1970s.

In 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev of planning an attack on the plant and the following year a Ukrainian drone started a fire near the facility, but no abnormal level of radioactivity was detected.

Nuclear power plants have been one of the reasons for concern associated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The IAEA regularly warns of the risk of a disaster, especially in Zaporijia, the largest in Europe, which is under Russian occupation in southern Ukraine, and Chernobyl, north of Kiev, where the structure built to confine the radioactive deposits released by the nuclear disaster in 1986 was hit by a Russian drone.