The first and only nuclear facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Barakah atomic power plant is well protected from any threatening situations, UAE authorities said.
This was against the backdrop of ongoing missile attacks by the Yemeni Houthis, said the Director General of the Federal Office for Nuclear Regulation (FANR) Christer Viktorsson.
“The nuclear power plant was designed following the principles of increased security, both physical and informational. Sensitive parts of the power plant are well protected in case of any event. The UAE as a whole has “reliable security,” he said.
The UAE is part of the Arab coalition that entered the civil war in Yemen on the government’s side in 2015. During the last few years, rebels from the Shia movement Ansar Allah carried out hundreds of strikes in Saudi Arabia using Iran-supplied drones and missiles.
By 2019, the UAE withdrew from the war, thus ensuring a lull. Still, on January 17, 2022, the Houthis unexpectedly fired on a construction site near the airport and an oil storage facility in Abu Dhabi, killing three and injuring six civilians.
At the end of January, Ansar Allah also said it was behind the shelling of Dubai. To date, the Emirates are again an active party to the conflict, inflicting airstrikes on rebel launchers. It is noteworthy that the
Houthis themselves announced the Barakah nuclear power plant’s shelling in 2017, when not a single reactor had yet been put into operation. The UAE denied those reports back then.
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