The United States should embrace a clear policy condemning military attacks on international nuclear power plants, a senior think tank official said at a hearing Monday.
Earlier this month the United States was one of only four countries that opposed a resolution for the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] Board of Governors that expressed concern about attacks targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, including nuclear attacks, James Acton, said Monday. His comments came during a hearing by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and its ownership in Ukraine.
Acton is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at Washington think tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The resolution expressed concern about attacks targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, critical for the off-site power supply of nuclear power plants, Acton said. He added that while attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure “represent a direct threat to nuclear safety,” there were “only four countries that opposed this resolution on the Board of Governors: Russia, China, Niger and the United States.”
Although the resolution still passed, the U.S. gave an opposing vote and said in a statement that while it supports the IAEA’s work in Ukraine, “we do not support the Board’s current consideration of an unnecessary resolution that does not help achieve peace between Ukraine and Russia,” Acton said.
“So it may seem like an easy thing to say we shouldn’t attack other countries’ nuclear power plants. We should have a very clear policy … But in fact, we’re kind of moving in the opposite direction,” Acton said.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest nuclear plant in Europe and a producer of 20% of Ukraine’s electricity at one point. Acton not only called this move “unprecedented,” but said it was “uniquely awful” in that “there has never been an operation mounted against an operating nuclear power plant before.”