UN nuclear watchdog chief arrives at Ukraine nuclear plant: Russian official

KYIV - United Nations nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi arrived at Ukraine’s Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia atomic plant on Thursday, a Russian official has said.

“The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) director-general and his team have arrived at the ZNPP,” Mr Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s permanent representative to the international organisation in Vienna, said in a tweet.

Mr Grossi had been expected to visit the plant

– ZNPP – in southern Ukraine on Wednesday, following talks in Kyiv on Tuesday.

The head of the IAEA was to tour the site to assess potential safety risks after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, the source of cooling water for the plant’s reactors.

But the visit was delayed by a day due to security concerns.

“It was not easy to arrange such a visit under the circumstances, but the Russian side did its best,” Mr Ulyanov said.

Since the start of the conflict, Mr Grossi has warned of the potential for a nuclear incident at the plant, where a permanent IAEA team is based.

In Kyiv on Tuesday, he said he was “very concerned” that the nuclear plant could be caught up in a Ukrainian counter-offensive to retake Russian-occupied territory.

The IAEA said on Sunday that it needed access to a site near the Zaporizhzhia plant to check water levels after the nearby reservoir lost much of its water

because of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam

downstream on the Dnipro River.

The nuclear watchdog had warned that the dam disaster, which sparked mass evacuations, further complicated “an already precarious nuclear safety and security situation” at the plant.

Satellite images from Tuesday confirmed a sharp drop in the level of the Dnipro since the dam was destroyed.

Russian forces captured the hydroelectric dam and the nuclear plant in southern Ukraine shortly after their February 2022 invasion.

The plant uses a cooling pond to keep its six reactors from potentially disastrous overheating.

The Nova Kakhovka reservoir was normally used to refill the pond, but cannot do so now because of its falling water level, the Ukrainian nuclear authorities have said.

Instead, the pond, which is separated from the reservoir, can be replenished using deep underground wells, they said.

Mr Grossi’s visit to the Zaporizhzhia plant follows a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Mr Grossi has visited the plant twice since it was occupied by Russia. AFP, REUTERS