The safety of the Russian-owned Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine is worsening day by day, Ukraine’s energy minister said on Friday, as the United Nations nuclear watchdog presses Russia to withdraw from the plant. I promised to keep calling.
The 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency’s executive board issued a resolution late Thursday condemning Russia’s occupation of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and expressing “grave concern” over staffing and maintenance deficiencies two years into the occupation. was approved.
“The overall situation is heading towards a nuclear disaster, and it is very important that this (Russian) presence ends immediately,” Ukraine’s Energy Minister Deutsche Galushchenko told a news conference.
“The number of problems just grows every day. And in a month, we’ll have another problem. In a month, we’ll have some more problems. ”, he said, adding that Ukraine would continue to seek a further resolution.
The IAEA, which has little involvement in the plant, says the situation in Zaporizhzhia remains unstable. The plant has lost all off-site power eight times in the past 18 months, forcing it to rely on diesel generators to cool fuel inside the reactor and avoid a potentially catastrophic meltdown. .
Russia and Ukraine, which have been at war for more than two years, have accused each other of shelling that destroyed power lines.
Ukrainian staff who previously worked for Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned power generation company, continue to operate the power plant alongside newly arrived Russians, although some Ukrainians have refused to sign contracts with Russia. Entry has been denied since March.
“The staff working at ZNPP currently consists only of former Energoatom employees who have obtained Russian nationality and signed employment contracts with Russian entities, as well as staff sent to ZNPP from the Russian Federation,” IAEA Confidential. The report has been sent. The member states revealed this in a Reuters poll last week.
“According to reports, ZNPP personnel continued to be exposed to various types of intense psychological stress,” it added.
Before the war, the factory had about 11,500 staff, according to the report.
Currently, the number of IAEA employees at the plant is reportedly around 4,500, but in the past quarter about 2,000 were on duty each day.
Russia says it has enough personnel at the power plant to operate the six currently mothballed reactors.
IAEA Director Rafael Grossi puts the number of holdouts who have refused to sign the deal with Russia at about 100. Galushchenko said this was “another Russian lie” and that the actual number was 380.
“The problem isn’t even the number of people. The problem is that these people are top-level talent. It’s not… average talent that can be easily replaced.”
The IAEA said Grossi had a “professional and frank” meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin about Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday. statement.
