The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, arrived this Thursday at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye to assess the situation after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, a Russian diplomat in Vienna said.
The Zaporozhye NPP, with six nuclear reactors, is the largest of its kind in Europe and was occupied by Russian troops in the early days of the military offensive launched by Moscow on February 24, 2022.
The IAEA has a team at headquarters that will be replaced during Grossi’s visit.
“The IAEA Director General and his team have arrived at the Zaporozhye NPP,” said Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna.
Grossi was due to visit the plant on Wednesday to assess potential safety risks from the collapse of the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnieper River, whose water is used to cool the six reactors that have been shut down.
The visit was postponed to this Thursday for security reasons.
“Under these conditions, it was not easy to organize a visit, but the Russian side did everything possible,” said Ulyanov, quoted by the French news agency AFP.
The Russian news agency TASS released a video showing a convoy of cars approaching the power plant, two of them with flags of the United Nations nuclear energy agency headquartered in Vienna.
Grossi, who has already visited the plant several times, must determine if he is in danger of a dam failure.
The head of the IAEA said on Tuesday in Kyiv that there was no immediate danger to the nuclear power plant, but acknowledged that he was concerned about the level of water in the coolant tank.
“There is a serious risk because water is limited. I want to give my assessment,” he said after a meeting with President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.
Kyiv and Moscow accused each other of destroying the Kakhovka dam on June 6, which caused severe flooding in southern Ukraine, which aggravated the situation in the occupied country on February 24, 2022.
The Zaporozhye power plant has been the target of repeated bombings, blamed on both Moscow and Kyiv, raising security concerns.
Russia has said it now owns the plant, having annexed the Zaporozhye region in September, as well as Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson, after doing the same with Crimea in 2014.
The fighting around the station prompted the IAEA to warn of a catastrophic accident in the country, which in 1986 recorded the largest nuclear accident of its kind at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
The conflict in Ukraine, with an unknown ratio of civilian to military casualties, has led Europe into what is considered the most serious security crisis since World War II (1939-1945).
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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