Grossi: Zaporizhzhia NPP faces “enormous dangers”

12 December 2022


Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) faces “enormous dangers”, according to Raphael Mariano Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Speaking to Al-Jazeera,  Grossi reportedly noted that thye plant housed six large nuclear power units as well as a used fuel storage facility. “It is incredible that it is being shelled,” he emphasised. “Who should we blame if there is an accident? Of course, not mother nature as it was at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and not a very strange combination of circumstances in an opaque political system, as it was with Chornobyl. Now we know what is happening, and what needs to be done. Don't shoot from above, from below, or from below or from underground and the people who are doing this know exactly what they're doing.”

He confirmed that he was negotiating for the establishment of a protective safety and security zone around the plant and was in talks “with Ukraine and with Russia which is effectively in control of the plant. In the official update on the situation at the plant, published by IAEA on 9 December, he said: “The situation at ZNPP remains precarious, fragile and potentially dangerous and we are doing everything we can to prevent a nuclear accident there, especially with our proposal to establish a nuclear safety and security protection zone around the facility. We are making progress in our consultations with Ukraine and Russia and I’m hopeful the zone will be agreed and implemented soon. It is urgently needed.”  

He added that a new team of IAEA experts had arrived at the site, replacing those who had been there for the past several weeks. “It is the fourth IAEA team at Europe’s largest NPP since the IAEA Support and Assistance Mission to Zaporizhzhia (ISAMZ) was established on 1 September,” he noted. He said the site continues to receive off-site power through a single 750 kilovolt (kV) external power line, with one 330 kV back up line from the nearby thermal power plant available. There is no change to the status of reactor units 1-6. Unit 5 and 6 remain in hot shutdown, producing the steam for the site and heating the water for the district heating system. Repair works of the damage caused by shelling on 19-20 November have been completed, except for some minor damage for which there is no safety concerns. At the thermal power plant 330kV switchyard, repairs continue.”

Ukraine’s nuclear utility Energoatom on 8 December had accused Russia of bringing Grad rocket launchers onto the site and setting them up near unit 6 adjacent to the used fuel storage facility, where Russia had been building extra protective measures. However, the IAEA inspectors resident at the site did not confirm these reports.



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