**KYIV** — Russian forces struck a spent nuclear fuel storage facility near Ukraine’s Chornobyl nuclear power plant early on Sunday, damaging buildings at the site but causing no immediate increase in radiation levels, Ukrainian officials and the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
The drone attack targeted the Centralized Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility in Kyiv Oblast, about nine miles (14 km) from the Chornobyl plant, site of the 1986 world’s worst nuclear disaster. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces deliberately hit the infrastructure.
“The strike significantly damaged a fuel-reception building metres away from where ‘large amounts of nuclear material’ is stored,” the IAEA said in a statement after being briefed by Ukrainian authorities.
Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator Energoatom reported that the spent nuclear fuel reception and transfer building and an IAEA administrative building were damaged in the strike, which occurred at approximately 2:05 a.m. local time using a Geran-2 type drone. First responders extinguished a fire covering about 40 square meters, officials said.
No spent nuclear fuel was present in the struck reception building, according to Ukrainian authorities. Radiation levels at the site and in the surrounding area remained within normal parameters, Energoatom and the IAEA confirmed.
Zelenskyy described the incident as “an extremely vile Russian strike” on critical nuclear infrastructure. “Russia deliberately struck this particular nuclear infrastructure facility,” he wrote on X. “As of now, there are no readings exceeding normal background radiation levels.”
The IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi expressed deep concern over the attack, stating it violated principles of nuclear safety. The agency said it plans to conduct an inspection at the site soon.
Ukraine’s Security Service launched an investigation into the strike, treating it as a potential war crime after finding fragments of the drone at the scene, according to Ukrainian prosecutors.
The incident occurred amid intensified Russian drone and missile attacks across Ukraine overnight into Sunday. Separate strikes elsewhere in the country killed at least three to four people, Ukrainian officials reported, though those casualties were not linked to the nuclear facility.
Chornobyl, located in northern Ukraine near the border with Belarus, has been a repeated point of concern since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022. Russian troops briefly occupied the plant in the early weeks of the war. The site houses the New Safe Confinement structure over the destroyed reactor No. 4, along with facilities for managing radioactive waste from the 1986 accident.
The Centralized Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility is designed to handle used fuel from Ukrainian nuclear power plants. Authorities stressed that the damaged buildings were part of supporting infrastructure rather than the main storage vaults containing large quantities of spent fuel.
As of Sunday evening, no further details on the extent of structural damage or repair timelines were available. The IAEA continues to monitor the situation.
