IAEA: Restarting Europe's Largest Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant Occupied by Russians Impossible
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said on Tuesday that it is impossible to restart the Zaporizhzhya NPP under the current conditions. The largest nuclear facility in Europe is located on Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russia and has been the target of attacks throughout the war.
On Tuesday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, arrived in the Russian city of Kaliningrad to discuss the situation at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant with a Russian interagency delegation.
He told reporters that he had managed to reach an agreement with Russian officials to improve safety at the plant.
Over the past year and a half, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog has visited Russia on several occasions to discuss the situation at the plant. These meetings took place in Moscow, St Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Sochi.
In March, Grossi visited Sochi and met with Vladimir Putin. During the conversation, the IAEA chief called on him to exercise maximum military restraint around the nuclear power plant.
Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe and one of the 10 largest in the world, has been under occupation since its seizure by Russia in March 2022, shortly after the start of the Russian war in Ukraine. Most of the Zaporizhzhia NPP staff are effectively held hostage by the Russian military.
Since then, there has been a constant threat of a nuclear disaster, as Russian troops who seized the Ukrainian nuclear power plant, mined its territory, and constantly resort to armed provocations and shelling of the plant and do not allow IAEA experts to enter the facility to inspect the plant.
Meanwhile, Alexei Likhachev, CEO of the Russian nuclear energy agency Rosatom, said that Zaporizhzhia is ‘absolutely safe’ and that additional security measures are being introduced, including protection against drones and protection of nuclear waste storage facilities.
