IRIA News

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will issue a report on the safety of the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine early next week following the visit of the IAEA chief to the power plant.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the chief of the UN nuclear agency International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said on September 2 that six IAEA staff members remain at the power plant after he led a 14-person mission there. However, the number would be reduced to two next week and those two would be the IAEA’s continuous presence.

Grossi, who stayed a few hours in Ukraine, told reporters that the agency was “establishing continued presence” at Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s biggest nuclear facility. He said that it was “obvious” that the “physical integrity“ of the Zaporizhzhia plant “has been violated several times.” IAEA is on a mission to avoid a radioactive catastrophe at the power plant.  Grossi said IAEA experts visited the entire site, including control rooms, emergency systems, generators, and met with the plant’s staff.

The plant was captured by Russian forces in March but continues to be operated by Ukrainian staff since the early days of the 6-month war. The facility is located near the front lines, and has come under repeated shelling in recent weeks, raising fears of a nuclear disaster. Grossi and his IAEA team made it to the nuclear power plant despite fresh military exchanges in the area which both sides blamed on the other.

While acknowledging the risks, Grossi said his team had the “minimum conditions“ to forge on with the final and dangerous leg of their journey but they accepted the risks and processed.

“We are going to be liaising and consulting with the staff at the facility. And I am going to consider the possibility of establishing a continued presence of the IAEA at the plant, which we believe is indispensable to stabilize the situation and to get regular, reliable, impartial, neutral updates of what the situation is there,“ he added. “It’s very important that the world knows what’s happening here. IAEA team said that they “recorded all the objects we showed” and said ‘we don’t give assessments of the military situation.”

Zelenskyy meets IAEA delegation in Kyiv

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with the representatives of the UN nuclear watchdog team in Kyiv head of their visit to inspect the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Zelenskyy has called for the “immediate de-militarization of the plant” after it was hit with fresh shelling. “The key thing that should happen is the demilitarisation of the territory of the plant,” said Zelenskyy. “This is exactly the goal of Ukrainian and international efforts. And it is bad that we have not yet heard the appropriate calls from the IAEA. Although we talked about it with Mr Grossi at our meeting in Kyiv.”

IAEA team said it needed at least until the weekend to evaluate security and damage at the plant, but Russian authorities said that the IAEA may be given just one day to finish the investigation.

Ukraine, Russia blame each other 

Ukrainian and Russian agencies have accused each other of trying to sabotage the IAEA mission. “The Russian military lies, manipulates and misrepresents reality at Zaporizhzhia NPP by disseminating only information on the IAEA mission visit it could benefit from,” Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom said. The company also accused the Russians of trying to prevent the IAEA mission from getting to know the facts on the ground.

Meanwhile, pro-Russian officials in the occupied area blamed the Ukrainians for blocking the IAEA’s work. Alexander Volga, head of the Kremlin-backed administration of Enerhodar, said that “the shelling of the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not stop, but their intensity significantly decreased,” and that technicians continued to work on restoring power lines damaged “as a result of the massive shelling of Enerhodar from the Ukrainian side.” Volga said the IAEA team “was provided with relevant documents on the nuclear power plant, as well as a map of shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”