A drone hit the cooling tower of a working power unit at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. There was no serious accident, the radiation background did not change.
But the significance of this episode may turn out to be much greater than the immediate damage: the war is getting closer and closer to the line beyond which nuclear energy ceases to be a tacitly protected territory.
Briefly about the main thing
- On September 17, a drone hit the cooling tower of a working unit of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant; the station continued to operate.
- This is not the first military incident around Russian and Ukrainian nuclear facilities.
- The main danger is the further erosion of the unspoken taboo on military operations around nuclear power plants.
- Ukraine is particularly vulnerable today: its three operating nuclear power plants provide the majority of its electricity production.
- For a severe energy crisis, it is not necessary to hit reactors – it is enough to disable critical substations and power lines.
Content:
- what happened
- Pandora’s box
- why Ukraine is especially vulnerable
- what could be the escalation scenario
Impact without an accident – but with consequences
Early in the morning of September 17, a drone hit the cooling tower of the Kursk nuclear power plant. According to available data, the unit continued to operate, there was no fire, and the radiation situation did not change.
The IAEA confirmed receipt of information about the incident and again called on the parties to exercise maximum military restraint, emphasizing the inadmissibility of attacks on nuclear facilities.
The agency has not determined the identity of the specific drone. The Russian side calls it Ukrainian; Kyiv did not publicly confirm responsibility for this episode.
But to assess further risks, the origin of this particular device is no longer the only question. Something else is more significant: military actions directly affect the infrastructure of an operating nuclear power plant.
And this is not the first time this has happened. Back in 2024, Athens News wrote about the growing danger around the Kursk nuclear power plant, when hostilities moved closer to the plant and the IAEA also demanded restraint.
Pandora’s box opens
During the war, there was a kind of unspoken taboo around nuclear facilities. Both sides blamed each other for actions near the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, and there were incidents with drones, power lines and support facilities, but the direct conversion of operating nuclear power plants into conventional targets remained too dangerous an escalation step.
A strike on the Kursk nuclear power plant could further blur this line.
This is where the “Pandora’s box” effect appears. If one side begins to consider strikes on enemy nuclear infrastructure facilities acceptable, it is much easier for the other side to politically explain retaliatory actions.
This does not mean that Russia has already decided to attack Ukrainian nuclear power plants. There is no such data. But Moscow now has another argument that it can use to justify further escalation of the energy war.
And the consequences of such a development for Ukraine are potentially much more severe than for Russia.
Three stations that support Ukrainian energy
Before the start of the war, Ukraine had four large nuclear power plants with 15 power units. The Zaporozhye plant with six reactors is under Russian control and does not produce electricity into the Ukrainian grid.
The Ukrainian energy system remains at its disposal three operating stations: Rivne, Khmelnytsky and South Ukrainian NPP – a total of nine reactors.
After the destruction of a significant part of thermal and hydro generation, their importance increased sharply. According to energy sector estimates, nuclear power plants today provide approximately 70–80% of Ukrainian electricity generation.
They are the ones who actually hold the country’s energy system after several years of Russian attacks on thermal power plants, hydroelectric power stations, substations and high-voltage networks.
Therefore, the main risk is not even the fantastic scenario of a direct missile hitting the reactor.
You don’t have to touch the reactor
To remove a nuclear power plant from the energy system, it is not necessary to destroy its reactor unit.
A nuclear power plant must transmit the generated electricity somewhere. This requires high-voltage lines, switchgears and large substations. Damage to such infrastructure could force a power unit to sharply reduce power or completely disconnect from the grid.
Similar situations have already happened. In May 2026, military activity caused a fire at the Dneprovskaya 750 kV substation, after which the South Ukrainian NPP partially lost external network connections. The IAEA has specifically warned that such substations are critical not only for power delivery, but also for nuclear safety.
This is where the potential scenario of retaliatory escalation becomes especially dangerous.
If the strikes systematically begin to disable the nodes connecting the Rivne, Khmelnitsky and South Ukrainian nuclear power plants with the national network, Ukraine will have to reduce power or shut down individual units. There is practically nothing to quickly replace the loss of several gigawatts of nuclear generation.
European imports can help with shortages, distributed gas generation can partially compensate for losses, but they are not capable of replacing several large nuclear units at the same time.
In this case, we will no longer be talking about regular shutdown schedules, but about the risk of a systemic energy crisis.
Editorial comment
The strike on the cooling tower of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant itself did not lead to a disaster. But the danger of this event may lie precisely in the precedent.
In war, there are many lines that are not crossed for a long time precisely because after the first step it is difficult to return the situation back. Nuclear energy is one of these frontiers.
If attacks around active nuclear power plants become perceived as a normal element of war, it will be extremely difficult to put the genie back in the bottle.
Russia has been systematically targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure for several years now. Until now, operating nuclear power plants remained the foundation that allowed the Ukrainian energy system to withstand these blows. The Kursk incident creates a risk that the next stage of the confrontation may affect this last foundation – even if not the reactors themselves, but the infrastructure, without which they are not able to supply the country with electricity.
That is why the blow to the Kursk nuclear power plant may turn out to be the straw after which the previous unspoken restrictions will no longer work.
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