IAEA Director General to visit Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant within next two weeks
Photo: IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi (GettyImages)
The Director General of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, will visit the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) within the next two weeks, according to his statement to the UN Security Council.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated that since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the IAEA has conducted 102 missions.
"I have personally led eight of them, including three to ZNPP and I will shortly be leading another one to ZNPP within the next two weeks," Grossi said.
In his address to the UN Security Council, he also emphasized that this is the first time in history that a war is being waged on objects of a large nuclear energy program. This concerns several of Ukraine's nuclear power plants and other facilities that have been directly shelled.
Grossi noted that the situation with nuclear safety and security at the ZNPP, in particular, remains extremely fragile. Since mid-2022, six reactors at the station have been shut down – five of them in cold shutdown mode and one in hot shutdown mode.
According to him, the potential danger of a major nuclear accident remains very real.
Situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
Russian forces seized Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on March 4, 2022. The station has been consistently shelled by the Russian military, thereby violating nuclear safety. Against this backdrop, the President of Ukraine requested a delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit the power plant.
On January 18, during a routine visit to ZNPP, IAEA experts discovered mines around the perimeter of the station.
Just two days later, Rafael Grossi announced that the Russian military had again mined Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
