UAE Reactor Drone Attack Highlights Wartime Nuclear Vulnerability

A drone strike that disrupted external power to a nuclear reactor in the United Arab Emirates this week has reignited concerns about the safety of nuclear facilities during armed conflict.

Unit 3 at the Barakah nuclear plant lost off-site power, essential for its operation, for approximately 24 hours after the attack on Sunday, forcing it to rely on emergency diesel generators.

Iran or one of its regional proxies is believed to have carried out the strike. One of three drones approached from the west, igniting a fire near the four-reactor facility that supplies the UAE with a quarter of its electricity.

The UAE reported that the strike hit an electrical generator “outside the inner perimeter,” raising fears it could have struck the switch yard, located just beyond a wall surrounding the site’s reactors.

This marks the first instance of a fully operating nuclear power plant needing to rely on backup generators due to a military attack, as reactors in Ukraine and Iran also face wartime threats.

The UAE’s nuclear safety regulator stated that the attack caused no release of radioactive material, though it noted the failure to fully defend a critical site from drones.

Experts told the Guardian that sufficient power should have been available from the three other reactors on site, but that did not seem to be immediately the case, possibly due to damage to the switch yard, which routes electricity in and out.

On Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the UAE had informed it that off-site power to unit 3 had been restored “earlier today,” meaning “the reactor no longer needs emergency diesel generators for power.”

Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA nuclear watchdog, said nuclear sites and other installations important for nuclear safety must never be targeted by military activity.

External power is crucial to keep reactor cores sufficiently cool. All nuclear sites have backup generators to maintain power in an emergency if outside supply is lost.

At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan in 2011, three reactor cores melted down after a tsunami caused by an earthquake overwhelmed the backup generators. Though the fuel was contained, about 160,000 people had to be evacuated.

The World Nuclear Association, a trade body representing the nuclear industry, said: “We call on those responsible for military activity of any kind in the proximity of this nuclear power plant, and all civilian energy facilities, to revisit the agreements of the Geneva conventions.”

Though the Geneva conventions, which set out laws of warfare, insist that civilian objects, including nuclear plants, “are protected against attack,” they accept they can be attacked “for such time as they are military objectives” – a loophole that aggressor states have interpreted widely.

Worries about attacks on nuclear sites and the potential risk to civilians escalated dramatically after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, more recently, the US-Israeli attack on Iran.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump said he had held off a fresh attack on Iran at the request of the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as the crisis in the Middle East remains deadlocked.

A month earlier the US president threatened to bomb Iran’s power plants as part of an attack to try to force Tehran to yield, though he then agreed to a ceasefire.

There remains concern, however, that Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, which has one working reactor, could either be struck directly or lose external power if US and Israel do renew their bombing.

In Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear site, seized by Moscow in 2022, remains on the frontline. External power to the six-reactor plant, which has been put into shutdown, was lost for a month in 2025.

Conventional power plants have been repeatedly bombed by Russia each winter to try to force Ukraine to surrender, but its three functioning nuclear plants have remained relatively unscathed because Moscow has so far considered a direct attack on the sites to be taboo.