UN nuclear watchdog head is in Ukraine out of renewed concern over Zaporizhzhia power plant safety

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog was holding talks with senior officials Tuesday in Ukraine over safety concerns for Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, where attacks were recently reported nearby.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was making his 10th visit since the Russia-Ukraine war began in February 2022.

Grossi posted on X that he was on his way to Zaporizhzhia to “help prevent a nuclear accident.”

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which came under Russian control in the wake of its 2022 full-scale invasion, saw artillery shelling in the area the previous day that damaged the facility’s power access, according to its operator Energoatom, which blamed Russia for the attacks.

“Russian shelling damaged one of the two external overhead lines through which … the Zaporizhzhya NPP receives power from the Ukrainian power system,” the operator said in a post on the Telegram messaging and social network. “In the event of damage to the second line, an emergency situation will arise,” it said, adding that technicians couldn’t access the site of the damage because of the “real threat of repeated shelling.”

Analysts say that an explosion at the Zaporizhzhia plant would produce radiation and likely trigger panic, but the radiation risk beyond the immediate blast area would be relatively low and nothing like the scale of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Also, if the wind is in an easterly direction, radiation could be pushed toward Russia.

The Zaporizhzhia region is one of four regions — along with Donetsk, Kherson and Luhansk — in southern and eastern Ukraine that Russia partly, and illegally, annexed in September 2022, seven months after it invaded its neighbor.

The Vienna-based IAEA says ongoing attacks in the Zaporizhzhia area, as well as damage to the country’s grid, pose threats to the power supply that’s vital to Ukraine’s nuclear power stations. The watchdog said its staff at Zaporizhzhia recently had to shelter indoors because of reported drone threats in the area.

Other than Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine has three active nuclear plants.

Grossi, who is traveling with a team of IAEA experts and officials, began a round of meetings in Kyiv with a stop at the Ministry of Energy and talks with the minister, Herman Halushchenko.

A Russian airstrike struck a hotel overnight Monday to Tuesday in Zaporizhzhia, the regional capital, killing an 8-year-old boy and a woman, Ukraine’s regional Gov. Ivan Fedorov said. Two other people, including a 12-year-old girl now in intensive care, were wounded, Fedorov said.

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