IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in his latest update that he will travel to Ukraine to hold high-level talks and assess developments at the Zaporizhia NPP (ZNPP), where nuclear safety and security remains precarious. It will be the fifth time that he crosses the frontline to access the ZNPP after he established a permanent IAEA presence at the site two years ago. It will be his 10th visit to Ukraine since the conflict began in February 2022.
Since Russia took control of ZNPP in March 2022, the Russian national guard has been protecting the station and in October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree formally transferring ZNPP to Russian jurisdiction under nuclear utility Rosenergoatom (part of Rosatom). A Russian Federal State Unitary Enterprise, JSC Zaporizhzhia NPP, has been established by Rosenergoatom to operate the plant. It is headed by the former chief engineer of Russia’s Balakov NPP, Oleg Romanenko. However, Ukraine’s Energoatom continues to claim ownership of the plant and the IAEA recognises this claim.
“The IAEA acts promptly and decisively whenever and wherever there are threats to nuclear safety and security. Our pro-active presence is of paramount importance to help stabilise the situation,” Grossi said. “My message has been loud and clear throughout this tragic war: 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 stands to benefit from it. I remain determined to do everything in my power to protect nuclear safety and security as long as the fighting continues.”
At ZNPP, the IAEA team stationed at the site has continued to hear explosions and other indications of military activities, at times near the plant itself. Due to reported drone threats in the area, the team was told to shelter indoors on 20 August and had to reschedule their planned walkdown on 26 August. Since Grossi visited ZNPP in February, it has been hit by drone strikes, experienced loss of power lines and, earlier this month, a fire caused significant damage to one of its two cooling towers.
“Two years after I launched our mission at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, it is needed more than ever. As these recent deeply concerning incidents make all too clear, the nuclear safety and security situation at the ZNPP remains extremely challenging. Our teams there and elsewhere in Ukraine are carrying out indispensable work on behalf of the wider international community in very difficult circumstances,” he said.
Over the past week, the IAEA team at the ZNPP has continued to conduct regular walkdowns across the site as part of their on-going nuclear safety and security assessment. Among other activities, they went to the turbine halls of reactor units 5&6 but were again not allowed to access the western parts of the buildings, as was also the case when they visited the turbine halls of units 3&4 in mid-August, and unit 2 earlier in the month.
The IAEA team is also continuing to closely monitor the cooling water situation at the site. Following the destruction of the downstream Kakhovka dam last year, the ZNPP dug 11 new wells in order to obtain the water needed for reactor cooling and other essential nuclear safety functions. As the ZNPP’s six reactors are all in cold shutdown, the water that these wells provide is sufficient for the site’s current needs, even though one of them was temporarily out of operation earlier this month.
The team has also been informed that the ZNPP is finalizing the implementation of a revised emergency response plan and is scheduling two exercises in the coming months, which the IAEA staff will request to observe.
Widespread attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leading to instability in the national grid, is presenting a persistent nuclear safety risk at Ukraine’s NPPs. Recent attacks led to the temporary shutdown or disconnection of some reactor units at the Rivne and South Ukraine NPPs. The off-site power situation at the Khmelnitsky NPP and Chornobyl site was also affected. Although no complete loss of off-site power event was experienced at any of these sites, the safety of operating NPPs is heavily dependent on a stable and reliable connection to the electricity grid.
“While none of the plants lost all their access to the national electricity grid – which has happened repeatedly at ZNPP over the past two years – I’m increasingly concerned about the growing vulnerability of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, and the potential impact this is having on the safety of all Ukraine’s operating nuclear power plants,” Grossi said.
In an interview with Al Arabiya TV Grossi, said that during his upcoming visit to Kiev, he plans to discuss with President Vladimir Zelensky the situation at ZNPP, as well as the energy infrastructure of Ukraine that is causing concern. “There is much to discuss with him. Of course, one of the topics is the situation at the ZNPP, but, as you know, there are serious tensions with the energy infrastructure of Ukraine, in particular, the nuclear one, ” Grossi said.
The IAEA does not name those responsible for the attacks on the Kursk nuclear power plant, as the international agency does not have “absolute confidence” in this information and it does not want to “politicize” the situation, Grossi said. According to him, now the parties are waiting for the IAEA to say or confirm the information that they themselves would like to hear. The head of the IAEA visited Kurchatov and inspected the Kursk NPP on August 27. Then he said that he saw traces of drone strikes on the territory of the nuclear power plant, and warned about the risk of a nuclear incident.
The IAEA does not name those responsible for the attacks on the Kursk nuclear power plant, as the international agency does not have “absolute confidence” in the information and it does not want to “politicize” the situation, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said in an interview with Al Arabiya TV channel. “For the sake of impartiality, in order to be accurate and not speculate, the agency reports [information] or confirms it only when it can independently evaluate the information,” Grossi explained.
Referring to his recent visit to Russia’s Kursk NPP, currently under attack from the Ukrainian forces which have invaded Russia’s Kursk region, he said: “We should not politicise the situation or take sides, blame or point fingers. When we, as a regulator, name names or mention something, there must be an unquestionable, absolute certainty. In this case, of course, this is not the case. When something happened there, we weren’t there,” Grossi said. The IAEA had come under strong criticism from Russian officials for not naming Ukraine as the aggressor in Kursk after he saw the remains of a drone shot down by Russian air defenses close to the Kursk NPP used fuel storage facility.
He noted: “In accordance with our mission to protect nuclear safety, we had to go there [to Kursk] and independently establish the facts….”For the sake of impartiality, in order to be accurate and not speculate, the agency confirms [information about attacks] only when it can independently assess the information,” Grossi said.
He acknowledged that a party to the conflict, on the territory of which nuclear facilities are located under threat, has the right to demand that the international atomic regulator identify those responsible for nuclear safety violations. He insisted that the IAEA “will never hide from the public” the facts of deliberate attacks on NPPs, if it has “irrefutable evidence” at its disposal.
Meanwhile, Zelensky has now admitted that the Armed Forces of Ukraine cannot regain control of ZNPP by military means. RBC-Ukraine quoted him as saying: “As for the return of the ZNPP, today there are only political steps and, unfortunately, they are not enough for the station to return under our control. It is safer for Ukraine to control the Zaporizhia station, and so far, from the point of view of the military option, I do not see such opportunities, and those that probably exist are dangerous.” Ukrainian forces in the past have several times tried to storm the plant but have failed.
