Moscow urges Israel not to strike Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant

St Petersburg — The head of Russia’s nuclear energy corporation warned on Thursday that an Israeli attack on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant could lead to a “Chernobyl-style catastrophe”.

An Israeli military spokesperson said Israel had struck the site, but an Israeli military official later called the statement “a mistake” and said he could neither confirm nor deny that the Bushehr site on the cost of the Gulf had been hit.

Bushehr is Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant and was built by Russia.

President Vladimir Putin said earlier on Thursday that Israel had promised Russia that Moscow’s workers — who are building more nuclear facilities at the Bushehr site — would be safe, even as Israel tries to degrade Iran’s nuclear capabilities by force.

The head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, warned on Thursday that the situation at the plant was fraught with risk.

“If there is a strike on the operational first power unit, it will be a catastrophe comparable to Chernobyl,” the state RIA news agency cited Alexei Likhachev as saying.

Likhachev was referring to the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986, when a reactor exploded at Chernobyl in Ukraine, then part of the former Soviet Union.

An attack on Bushehr would be “beyond ... evil,” Likhachev said.

Russia has evacuated some of its specialists from Bushehr, he said, but the core workforce — which Putin said numbered hundreds of people — remained on site.

“We are prepared for any scenario, including the rapid evacuation of all our employees,” RIA cited Likhachev as saying.

Reuters