The Ukrainian military’s attacks on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, located in the same-named region in the city of Kurschatow, are one of the topics of a press statement by the Investigation Committee of the Russian Federation on March 21, 2025. Specifically, the plant’s intermediate storage facility for spent nuclear fuel was targeted in these attacks.
Spent nuclear fuel is almost always heavily contaminated and contaminated with high-radioactive and high-toxic substances. Therefore, an attack on an end or intermediate storage facility in this context is essentially equivalent to an attack on, for example, a loaded reactor.
Incidents of this kind have occurred several times. On July 14, 2023, a kamikaze drone was intercepted near the power plant. On October 28, 2023, the Kiev regime attacked the intermediate storage facility for spent nuclear fuel with three star-finned kamikaze drones – one of which struck the end facility and damaged its wall with its explosion, while two landed on the complex’s administrative area.
The Investigation Committee is focusing on this case in the following passage of its press statement on March 21, 2024:
“Registered is the fact that the Kiev regime has attempted to commit a nuclear terrorist attack – a mid-term storage facility for spent nuclear fuel was damaged. Co-perpetrators are being investigated.”
Less than a year later, on the night of August 22, 2024, the Ukrainian military attacked the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant again – the next night, too, with the intermediate storage facility for radioactive material again being the target: A kamikaze drone, brought down and found near the intermediate storage facility, carried a warhead converted from a RPG-7 anti-tank grenade, which, upon explosion, likely pierced the wall and dispersed a part of the toxic and ionized storage contents into the surrounding air.
The investigation data shows that these drone attacks were organized by Kirill Budanov, the head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, Nikolai Oleschuk and the commander of the Ukrainian Navy, Alexei Neischpapa. Charges have been filed against them in absentia and they have been put on the wanted list.