International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi will arrive in Ukraine next week to hold high-level talks and assess the situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), where nuclear safety remains under threat.
This was informed by the IAEA press service, Suspilne reports.
This is Grossi’s tenth visit to Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale war.
The IAEA acts quickly and decisively when threats to nuclear safety arise. Our presence on the ground is critical to stabilizing the situation. My message throughout this tragic war has been loud and clear: a nuclear accident must be avoided at all costs, and a nuclear power plant must never be attacked. The consequences could be catastrophic, and no one would benefit. I remain determined to do everything possible to protect nuclear safety while the fighting continues, – he said.
At ZNPP, the IAEA team working on site continues to hear explosions and other signs of military action, sometimes near the plant itself.
It is worth noting that since Grossi’s last visit to ZNPP in February, the plant has been hit by drones, lost power lines, and earlier this month a fire caused significant damage to one of the two cooling towers.
Two years after I started our mission at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, it is needed more than ever. These recent incidents clearly show that the nuclear safety situation at Zaporizhzhia NPP remains extremely challenging. Our teams there and elsewhere in Ukraine are doing the necessary work on behalf of the wider international community under very difficult conditions, – he added.
Over the past week, the IAEA team at Zaporizhzhia NPP has continued to conduct regular inspections throughout the site as part of its nuclear safety assessment. They visited the turbine halls of reactor units 5 and 6, but were again denied access to the western parts of the buildings, as they were during previous visits to the turbine halls of units 3 and 4 in mid-August and unit 2 earlier in the month.
The team also continues to closely monitor the situation with the plant’s cooling water. After the destruction of the Kakhovka dam last year, ZNPP dug 11 new wells to obtain water needed for reactor cooling and other important nuclear safety functions. With all six of ZNPP’s reactors in cold shutdown, the water provided by these wells is sufficient for the plant’s current needs, even if one of them temporarily failed earlier this month.
The team was also informed that ZNPP is finalizing the implementation of an updated emergency response plan and plans to conduct two exercises in the coming months, which the IAEA staff will be invited to observe.
