Drone strike causes fire outside nuclear power plant in Abu Dhabi

A drone strike caused a fire outside a nuclear power plant in Abu Dhabi on Sunday (May 17, 2026), authorities in the United Arab Emirates said.

The Abu Dhabi media office said in a statement that the fire broke out in an external electrical generator outside the perimeter of the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant in Al Dhafra.

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There were no reports of injuries and there’s no impact on radiological safety levels, it said.

The UAE’s nuclear regulator said the fire didn’t impact the plant safety. “All units are operating as normal,” the organisation wrote on X.

There was no claim of responsibility for the drone strike, and the UAE statement didn’t blame any party for the attack. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sunday’s (May 17, 2026) strike marked the first time the four-reactor Barakah Nuclear Power Plant has been targeted in the Iran war. The reactor sits in the far western deserts of Abu Dhabi, near the border with Saudi Arabia.

The $20 billion Barakah nuclear power plant was built by the Emirates with the help of South Korea and went online in 2020. It’s the first and only nuclear power plant on the Arabian Peninsula.

Nuclear power plants increasingly have found themselves targeted in wars in recent years, first during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. During the Iran war, Tehran repeatedly claimed its Bushehr nuclear power plant came under attack, though there was no direct damage to its Russian-run reactor nor any radiological release.

There have been several instances of attacks around the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf countries over the past several weeks. Talks between Iran and the U.S. are at a standstill as the shaky ceasefire threatens to collapse and tip the Middle East back into open warfare, prolonging the worldwide energy crisis sparked by the conflict.

Iran still has a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway where a fifth of the world’s oil passed through before the war, and America is blocking Iranian ports.