A drone struck a vehicle on 15 July at the boundary between the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant industrial site and the city of Enerhodar, killing the plant's chief engineer, Alexander Yakovlev, and his driver 1. Two people died, not one. Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear operator that has run the occupied plant since 2022, called it a terrorist attack and demanded a response from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi condemned the attack without assigning blame. World Nuclear News reported him describing it as "an unacceptable attack on the plant and its management, seriously threatening nuclear safety", and repeating his call for an end to attacks on or near nuclear sites and their staff 2. Ukraine's military did not comment. Nothing published this week establishes who fired, and the account here rests on reporting rather than on any agency document Lowdown has read.
The surrounding week hollowed out the town that keeps the plant staffed. Enerhodar's fire station was hit again on 13 and 14 July, damaging the facade and an autocistern, after the earlier strike the IAEA recorded there on 1 July 3. On 18 July the city lost power and water entirely in further strikes, with the plant itself unaffected and radiation readings normal 4.
A reactor in shutdown still requires cooling, and cooling requires power, water and staff who can reach the site. Enerhodar now has a damaged fire station, no mains water to fight a fire with, and a senior engineer killed on the road between the town and the plant. Radiation readings being normal describes the last few days rather than the next few.
