Nuclear surveillance mission heads to Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine

A team from the United Nations nuclear watchdog on Monday made its way to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the agency’s head said, as Russia and Ukraine exchanged accusations of bombings nearby, stoking fears of a disaster. of radiation.

Captured by Russian troops in March but run by Ukrainian officials, Zaporizhzhia has been a turning point in a conflict that has escalated into a war of attrition fought mainly in eastern and southern Ukraine, six months after Russia launched its invasion.

“We need to protect the safety of the biggest nuclear facility in Ukraine and Europe,” Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a Twitter post.

A team of IAEA inspectors he leads will arrive at the plant on the Dnipro River, near the frontline in southern Ukraine, this week, Grossi said, without specifying the day of arrival.

The IAEA tweeted separately that the mission will assess physical damage, conditions in which employees are working on site and “determine the functionality of safety and security systems”. It will also “carry out urgent safeguards activities,” a reference to tracking nuclear material.

The Kremlin said on Monday that the IAEA mission was “necessary” and urged the international community to pressure Ukraine to reduce military tensions at the plant.

The UN, the United States and Ukraine have called for the withdrawal of military equipment and personnel from the nuclear complex, the largest in Europe, to ensure it is not a target. But the Kremlin again ruled out withdrawing its forces from the site.

With fears of a nuclear accident in a country still haunted by the Chornobyl disaster of 1986, authorities in Zaporizhzhia are handing out iodine pills and teaching residents how to use them in case of a radiation leak.

Russian forces fired on Enerhodar, the town near Dnipro where the plant is located, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff said Sunday night on his Telegram channel, alongside a video of firefighters dousing cars in flames.

“They provoke and try to blackmail the world,” declared Andriy Yermak.

Liliia Vaulina, 22, among a growing number of refugees from Enerhodar arriving in the Ukrainian town of Zaporizhzhia, some 50 kilometers upriver from the plant, said she hoped the IAEA mission would lead to a demilitarization of the area.

“I think they will stop the bombing,” she told Reuters.

Source: CNN Brasil

You may also like