What could have prevented the seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant—Europe’s largest such facility— and its continued embattlement as an effective hostage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Overwhelmed by Moscow’s forces early in the war, the plant’s six Soviet-built reactors and stores of spent nuclear fuel have now been forced to the front lines of the largest conflict on European soil since World War II—and there seems to be nothing that the international community can do about it.   

 Awkwardly tasked with overseeing this fragile situation is the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which, like numerous other international bodies, was caught flat footed when Russian forces rolled not only into the Zaporizhzhia plant, but the Chernobyl zone as well—acts barely conceived of within the framework of international norms governing nuclear power use.  

 The invasion has thus thrust the IAEA into the forefront of negotiations concerning nuclear safety at the Zaporizhzhia plant, with its director general, Rafael Grossi, forced to tread a mosaic of eggshells as he seeks to elicit assurances from Moscow and Kyiv not to cause a major nuclear accident as the fighting drags on.   

In this report, we argue that, while the IAEA has been intermittently successful in its attempts to provide a public facing front for concern about conditions at the Zaporizhzhia plant, its existence alone is not sufficient to prevent attacks on civilian nuclear facilities. Because of this, we further argue that the international community must work to reform our common nuclear security policies to protect civilian atomic facilities from becoming the spoils of—or weapons in—international conflicts.  

Any impetus for this reform would have to emerge from within the international community. The question is how. The goal of this report is to start that conversation.   

Download the report.