• UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says an attack on a nuclear facility is “suicide”.
• Ukraine has warned of a Chernobyl-style disaster at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex.
• Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for artillery strikes that could result in an accident.

UN inspectors are attempting to gain access to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex, where Russia and Ukrainian authorities have traded blame for artillery strikes that the UN warns could result in “nuclear disaster.”

“Any attack (on) a nuclear plant is a suicidal thing,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said at a news conference Monday, according to Reuters.

Guterres’ remarks come as Ukraine has warned of a Chernobyl-style disaster at the plant and has called for it to be declared a demilitarised zone, with international watchdogs fearing an accident following two days of fighting at the plant occupied by Russian forces.

Ukraine has launched a counter-offensive in the country’s southern region, where the plant is located, after Russian forces concentrated their forces in the area, resulting in fighting around the plant. In Friday’s fighting, rockets landed near a high-voltage power line, and on Saturday, they struck near a dry storage facility. The shelling also caused radiation-monitoring sensors near the facility to be damaged.

“This time a nuclear catastrophe was miraculously avoided, but miracles cannot last forever,” Ukraine’s state nuclear power firm Energoatom said, according to the Washington Post.

The strikes have been blamed on Russia and Ukraine, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky calling for a “stronger response from the international community.”

Experts are concerned about the situation at the plant. Executive Director of the Arms Control Association, Daryl Kimball, has warned that buildings surrounding nuclear facilities are not designed to withstand military strikes.

“This is particularly dangerous because these buildings are not built with the same kind of reinforced concrete that the reactor containment building is,” Kimball told the Washington Post. “These places were not designed as fortresses against external missile or artillery strikes.”

Kimball warned that a prolonged power outage at the plant could be fatal, noting that these power plants have “a certain number of days for which they have backup diesel power generation.”

“This is the first time in the history of the nuclear age that a major nuclear power facility for a sustained period of time is in the middle of an active war zone,” Kimball said.

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