Ukraine ‘one step away from nuclear meltdown', warns energy minister

Telegraph

27-04-2025

Ukraine has been left 'one step away' from catastrophic nuclear meltdowns because of Russian bombardments of its atomic power stations, the nation's energy minister has warned.
Missile attacks on the three nuclear power stations left under Ukrainian control, as well as their associated substations, cables and cooling equipment, are putting Europe at risk of a cloud of nuclear radiation escaping into the atmosphere, according to German Galushchenko, who oversees Ukraine's energy systems.
'Russia has been attacking the substations supplying independent cooling power to the nuclear station. So when there is destruction of these power supplies, the nuclear units go into an emergency shutdown regime,' he said.
'The electricity for cooling then has to be supplied by a reserve diesel generator – but this is dangerous [because reserve generators can fail].
'We have been one step short of a nuclear meltdown many times now.'
Mr Galushchenko's warning came after attending a global energy summit in London last week, where he compared the potential impact of such a meltdown with Japan's nuclear catastrophe of 2011, when an earthquake severed the back-up power lines to the Fukushima nuclear power station.
Fukushima's back-up diesel generators were then destroyed by a tsunami linked to the same earthquake, meaning there was no reserve cooling power. The result was an explosion and release of a giant radiation cloud.
Mr Galushchenko warned that Russian bombardments of Ukraine's nuclear stations risked triggering exactly the same train of events – and has raised his concerns in confidential warnings to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
He and his staff have even begun holding training exercises to deal with such an event, using weather and wind forecasts to work out which parts of Europe could be affected.
'Each time it depends on, on the humidity and the winds as to how far this cloud of radiation could go, but they include central Europe, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia and of course Ukraine. It's a horrible story,' he said.
Playing with fire
Europe has already experienced two such disasters.
An explosion at the Russian-run Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine in 1986 sent a plume of radioactivity across Western Europe including the UK.
Rainfall then deposited radioactive dust across upland areas of Wales, Cumbria, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where grazing sheep became so radioactive they were deemed too dangerous to eat.
A similar disaster occurred at the UK's own Windscale plant – now renamed Sellafield – in 1957 contaminating much of northern England, and forcing a ban on milk production because it had become radioactive.
Ukraine has four nuclear power plants with a total of 15 operating reactors, plus adjacent stockpiles of used fuel rods and other radioactive waste.
Two are in the west – Khmelnytskyi and Rivne – while the third is in the South, north of Odesa and nearer the front lines.
Zaporizhzhia, the furthest east, has already been captured by the Russians, but is still close to the front lines with multiple reports of drone and artillery attacks around the reactors and waste stores.
The IAEA has issued multiple warnings about the risk of a nuclear disaster caused by the Ukraine conflict, reporting drone attacks on the south Ukraine plant and another at Zaporizhzhia that punched a hole in a radioactive waste store.
It has also been co-ordinating deliveries of safety equipment from across the EU and the UK in preparation for any disaster, warning two weeks ago: 'At Ukraine's nuclear sites, frequent air raid alarms and the sound of explosions in the distance continued to highlight persistent risks to nuclear safety.'
On Thursday, Rafael Grossi, the IAEA director general, issued a further warning.
'What was once virtually unimaginable – evidence of military action in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility – has become a near daily occurrence and a regular part of life at Europe's largest nuclear power plant,' he said.
'From a nuclear safety perspective, this is clearly not a sustainable situation. We are doing everything we can to prevent a nuclear accident during this tragic war,'
Mr Galushchenko has told the IAEA that Russia's attacks are setting the stage for a European-wide nuclear catastrophe – and that such an event would also risk killing off any hopes of a renaissance for nuclear energy in Europe.
'I have discussed this many times with the IAEA's board of governors where there is a Russian delegate also present, but the Russians always say that nuclear power stations are legitimate targets,' he said.
'We are here [in London] to discuss the global renaissance of the nuclear industry because it is low-carbon energy. But if an accident like this happens it could stop the renaissance. Totally stop.
'So this is an issue not just for Ukraine – it's a game of fire which the Russians are playing.'
Relentless attacks
Mr Galushchenko, 51, trained as a lawyer and economist before becoming Ukraine's energy minister in 2021, prior to Russia's invasion.
Unlike his boss, Volodymyr Zelensky, he makes a point of wearing immaculate suits to international meetings – but he also has come too close to the conflict for comfort.
'We were visiting a power site for one meeting and delayed the time by half an hour [for security reasons] and the venue was hit by a missile. We were so lucky,' he said.
'The Russians mostly use ballistic missiles, and there is very short time between launching and impact – they are very quick. So there is often no chance to run.'
Others have not been so lucky.
'We have had more than 160 of our energy staff killed and more than 300 wounded, when they are doing their jobs,' Mr Galushchenko added.
'The latest tactic is they attack, wait for us to start repairs and then attack a second time in the same place, knowing that the [civilian] repair brigades are there.'
The scale of attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure is huge. Since 2022 Russia has seized 18 gigawatts (GW) of Ukraine's original 58GW of power generation capacity.
This includes six thermal power plants as well as Zaporizhzhia, which produced 6GW before the war forced it to shut down.
Missile and drone attacks have also destroyed the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, near the southern city of Dnipro.
Targeted shelling of critical energy infrastructure, which began in the autumn of 2022, means more than 63,000 pieces of energy equipment have been destroyed or damaged including all major high-voltage substations.
During the winter of 2022 and early 2023, an average of 3.3m households were without electricity, prompting the UK and Nato allies to send the country thousands of power generators. Such responses have halted the widespread blackouts but the attacks on energy infrastructure are relentless.
UK vulnerabilities
Compared to the crisis faced by Ukraine and Mr Galushchenko, the problems for the UK – and Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, in particular – may seem trivial. But he warns that this could change.
Britain, he points out, is massively reliant on a complex network of subsea pipelines and cables.
One pipeline alone, the Langeled, connecting Norway to the UK, brings up to a quarter of the UK's gas supplies. For electricity, a network of nine interconnectors bring up to 22pc of our power from European neighbours.
Mr Galushchenko warned that an increase in tensions could prompt Russia to attack any of these covertly, leaving the UK instantly at risk of blackouts and gas shortages.
'Russia always uses energy as a weapon. That's obvious from history – it goes back to Soviet Union times,' he said.
The energy minister was in the UK with two key messages.
His first is a plea to keep the pressure on Russia by maintaining sanctions and not allowing Putin's regime back into the energy sector.
His second request is for Britain to help rebuild Ukraine, saying it had already helped greatly by supplying 1,000 generators when war was declared, as well as uranium to keep its reactors fuelled.
'One day this war will be over and we will be thinking about the recovery,' he said.
'That would probably be the biggest rebuilding since the Second World War. And we want British companies to help us rebuild.
'The countries which stayed with Ukraine from the beginning should come first.'