Monitors continue to hear explosions near Zaporozhye Power Plant, UN watchdog says
Drone threats have disrupted the work of UN inspectors at Russia’s Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant on at least two occasions in the past ten days, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.
In its statement on Thursday, the agency announced that next week the organization’s director-general, Rafael Grossi, will make his fifth visit to the facility since the start of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022.
Members of the IAEA permanent mission, launched at the Zaporozhye nuclear facility in September 2022, “continued to hear explosions and other signs of military activity, sometimes close to the plant itself,” said the agency.
“Due to reported drone threats in the area, the team was instructed to shelter indoors on August 20 and had to reschedule their hike planned for August 26,” said the IAEA.
The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, has been under Russian control since March 2022. Throughout the conflict, Moscow and Kiev have repeatedly accused each other of shelling the facility, and the Russian Defense Ministry said several attempts by Ukrainian strike units to retake it had been repelled.
In the fall of 2022, the Zaporozhye region officially joined Russia, along with the Kherson region and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
According to the UN watchdog, since Grossi’s last trip to the Zaporozhye plant in February this year, “has been hit by drone strikes, suffered loss of power lines, and earlier this month a fire caused significant damage to one of its two cooling towers.”
“These recent and deeply concerning incidents make it abundantly clear that the nuclear safety situation at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant remains extremely challenging,” said the head of the IAEA.
“A nuclear accident must be avoided at all costs, and a nuclear power plant must never be attacked. The consequences could be disastrous, and no one can benefit from it,” he added.
On Monday, Grossi visited Russia’s Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, located near the area where Ukraine launched its large-scale incursion into internationally recognized Russian territory in early August. Fighting near the plant poses a risk of “nuclear incident”, he warned.
Russian authorities have previously accused Ukrainian troops of attacking the Kursk nuclear facility with drones, one of which reportedly crashed near the plant’s spent fuel storage last week.
Russia’s deputy envoy to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said on Wednesday that the West’s refusal to hold Ukraine accountable for the attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant had emboldened Kiev to attack the Kursk NPP in the same way. This impunity “could potentially trigger a nuclear incident with tragic consequences for the whole of Europe”, he emphasized.