Russia launched new rocket and artillery attacks near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant early Sunday, with Ukrainian officials reporting significant damage amid continuing fears that the facility itself could be hit and cause a radiation leak.

Ukraine’s Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said that heavy firing during the night left parts of Nikopol, about 10 kilometers from the nuclear site, without electricity. Rocket strikes damaged about a dozen homes in another nearby city, Marhanets.

The city of Zaporizhzhia, about 40 kilometers upriver from the nuclear facility, was also attacked, with city council member Anatoliy Kurtev saying two people were injured.

Despite the attacks, International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Ukraine had told it that “all safety systems remained operational and there had been no increase in radiation levels.”

Grossi said that Ukraine reported all radioactivity measurements were within normal range and there was no indication of hydrogen leakage. Officials are particularly concerned about the cooling systems for the plant’s nuclear reactors. A cooling system failure could cause a nuclear meltdown.

Iodine tablets have been handed out to residents who live near the Zaporizhzhia plant in case of radiation exposure.

Grossi said the continued shelling near the plant remains a risk, with both Russia and Ukraine accusing each other of shelling near the facility. The plant has been controlled by Russia since early in its six-month invasion but is operated by Ukrainian engineers.

Grossi said he is continuing discussions with Ukraine and Russia to allow IAEA experts into the facility in the coming days to assess any damage from the weeks of shelling near the plant and whether all its systems are functional.

Ukraine’s energy minister adviser, Lana Zerkal, said the IAEA, a United Nations agency, is expected to visit the site this week.

Moscow said it supports the work of the IAEA but has refused to withdraw its soldiers from the complex to create a demilitarized zone.

Both Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of firing artillery shells at Europe’s largest nuclear plant. The state-run energy operator Energoatom said Saturday Russian troops had “repeatedly shelled” the site over the past day.

In countering the claims, Russia’s defense ministry said Ukrainian forces “shelled the territory of the station three times” in the past day. “A total of 17 shells were fired,” the ministry said in a communique.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the situation around the Zaporizhzhia plant remains “very precarious and dangerous” after the plant resumed electricity supplies to Ukraine following a temporary outage Thursday.

Zelenskyy said in his address, “Any actions by Russia that could trigger the shutdown of the reactors will once again put the station one step away from disaster.”

The plant needs power to run the reactors’ cooling system, and any extended power failure could put the plant in jeopardy of a meltdown.

The power outage heightened dread of a nuclear disaster in a country still haunted by the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl plant.

An engineer working under Russian occupation since March 4 at the Zaporizhzhia power plant has told VOA that Russian forces have placed artillery and missile installations within and around the property.

The engineer, whose identity is being withheld for fear of retaliation by the occupying authorities, supports Ukrainian government claims that Russia itself is responsible for the explosions.
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Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.