'You're playing with fire': UN warns against shelling of the Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

The UN's nuclear inspector warned Sunday that such strikes threatened a grave tragedy at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine.

More than a dozen explosions rattled Europe's largest nuclear power plant on Saturday evening and Sunday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated.  Once again, Moscow and Kyiv have pointed fingers at one other for the shelling of the complex after a series of explosions over the last several months.

The chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, has commented on the shocking explosion news.

"Explosions happened at the site of this huge nuclear power facility, which is utterly unacceptable. Whoever is behind this, it must stop immediately. As I have warned many times before, you're playing with fire!" he added in a statement.

The IAEA team on the ground reported that, based on information supplied by plant management, certain buildings, systems, and equipment had been damaged, but nothing essential to nuclear safety and security.

The team expects to undertake an examination on Monday, Grossi said in a statement published later on Sunday.

However, the Russian nuclear power operator Rosenergoatom said that there would be limitations on the scope of the inspection team's work.

"They interpret their mandate as having no limits. This is not so," Renat Karchaa, an adviser to Rosenergoatom's CEO, told Tass news agency.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station generated nearly a fifth of Ukraine's energy before Russia's invasion, and has been forced to run on back-up generators a number of occasions. It is equipped with six Uranium 235-containing VVER-1000 V-320 reactors, which were constructed in the Soviet Union and use water for cooling and moderating.

Although the reactors are offline at the moment, if the electricity to the cooling systems were to go out, the nuclear fuel might overheat and cause an explosion. Power lines have been regularly severed by shelling.

When asked by French TV station BFM whether he intended to visit Zaporizhzhia, Grossi said, "To be sure," without providing any other context.

Both the Russian defence ministry and TASS quoted Karchaa as claiming that Ukrainian shelling had damaged certain storage facilities at the factory.

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According to TASS, he stated that although the shells had been fired close to a dry nuclear waste storage facility and a structure that contains new used nuclear fuel, no radioactive emissions had been discovered as of yet.

Ukrainian nuclear energy company Energoatom said Russian military shelling caused at least 12 damage to facility infrastructure and blamed Russia.

It said that Russia had attacked the facilities needed to restart the plant's sections in an effort to cut off Ukraine's electricity supply even more.

(With inputs from Reuters)