Cannon House Office Building, Room 360
Stream live here
Control and operation of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), has become a key inflection point in negotiations to end Russia’s war on Ukraine. For Ukraine, retaking ZNPP is a strategic and economic necessity. Control of the power plant would turn Ukraine from a net energy importer to a net energy exporter, a reality Russia understands well and wishes to exploit. Russia seized the plant early in 2022 and has kept it dormant since. Over the past four years, experts have raised alarms about Russia’s poor maintenance of the plant, which requires significant electricity and water.
Ukraine’s status as a civil and military nuclear power has been a source of domestic and international contention for decades. In the 1990’s, the United States convinced Ukrainian officials that, given their history with nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, it was best for their security to relinquish the Soviet nuclear weapons on their soil, become a non-nuclear state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and sign the Budapest Memorandum. And yet, the institutions and countries that promised to secure Ukraine have failed to shield them from Russia’s nuclear coercion or its weaponization and theft of civil nuclear sites.
This briefing will discuss concerns about Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s status and what support Ukraine needs to maintain and secure its nuclear sites in the event of an eventual settlement. Panelists will also discuss how the United States and partners should approach Russia’s nuclear recklessness in response to the collapse of the international nuclear regulatory framework.
Panelists:
James Acton, co-director, Nuclear Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Mariana Budjeryn, senior researcher, Center for Nuclear Security Policy, MIT Security Studies Program
Robert Wagner, researcher, Naval Postgraduate School
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