Ukrainian drones attack hometown of Kursk Nuclear Power Plant

Drones of the Armed Forces of Ukraine attempted to attack a warehouse in Kurchatov. Kurchatov is a town in the Kursk region, where the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant is located.

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org by Dmitriy 92, CC BY-SA 4.0

According to sources, at about 4 p.m., several drones were seen flying purposefully toward Kurchatov, bypassing the Kursk NPP. The drones crashed near Energetikov Street, 200 meters from residential buildings and 6 kilometers from the nuclear power plant.

A fire broke out at the site where the drones crashed. Emergency services are working on the scene.

Details

Kurchatov is a town in Kursk Oblast, Russia, located on the Seym River 42 kilometers (26 mi) west of Kursk. Population: 40,318 (2021 Census); 42,706 (2010 Census); 45,556 (2002 Census); 41,085 (1989 Soviet census). Kurchatov was founded in 1968 due to the construction of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant and granted town status in 1983. It was named after Soviet physicist Igor Kurchatov. The town of Kurchatov, along with the neighbouring Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, stood in for the town of Pripyat and the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the 1991 American television movie, Chernobyl: The Final Warning. Kurchatov and the Kursk nuclear power plant would play as Pripyat and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant once again in the 2021 Russian film Chernobyl: Abyss. In what is now Kurchatov in 1943 fighting as part of the Battle of Kursk took place on two separate occasions that summer. The battle of Kursk was one of the pivotal battles of the Eastern Front and was one of the largest tank battles in the history of warfare.

The Kursk Nuclear Power Plant is one of the three biggest nuclear power plants (NPPs) in Russia and one of the four biggest electricity producers in the country. It is located on the bank of the Seym River about 40 kilometers west of the city of Kursk, midway between it and the town of Lgov, in western Russia. The nearby city of Kurchatov was founded when construction of the plant began. The plant feeds the grid for Kursk Oblast and 19 other regions. As of 2024, the site houses two active reactors and two decommissioned older units. It also houses the partially built Kursk 5 and Kursk 6 units which had construction halted, and two new VVER designs (Kursk II-1 and Kursk II-2) are under construction.