An IAEA inspection team braved intense shelling to reach the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, arriving after a delay of several hours in a large convoy with a heavy presence of Russian soldiers nearby.
“We are not going anywhere,” Grossi told reporters after returning to Ukrainian-held territory. “The IAEA is now there. It is at the plant and it is not moving. It’s going to stay there.”
Grossi said the agency is going to have a continued presence at the facility. One group of inspectors is going to stay there until Sunday or Monday, continuing with the assessment and “digging deeper into certain issues so I can report back to the IAEA board of governors”.
“We are also establishing a resident presence at the plant in the hope that they can continue to provide us with an impartial, neutral and technically sound assessment of whatever may be happening there,” Grossi said, adding “we now have a lot of work in terms of analysis of some of the technical aspects of what we saw”.
“I worry and will continue to worry about the plant until we have a situation that is more stable and predictable,” he said.
‘This Is Something That Cannot Happen’
Grossi said it is obvious that the plant and the physical integrity of the plant has been violated several times and “this is something that cannot continue to happen”.
“Whatever you think and wherever you stand on this war, this is something that cannot happen and this is why we are trying to put in place certain mechanisms and the presence of or people there to try to be in a better place.”
Grossi said he was with Ukrainian employees throughout the day and they are in a difficult situation, but have an incredible degree of professionalism.
He said the security situation around the facility was “pretty difficult”, but “having come this far I was not going to stop”. He said there were moments when there was very obvious fire from mortars, heavy artillery and machine guns and this was “very concerning”.
“I would summarise by saying our work has only started,” he said.
Ukrainian officials have said Russian officials at Zaporizhzhia are “manipulating and distorting” information shared with IAEA officials.
Ukrainian state-owned operator Energoatom said Russian officials “are making every effort to prevent the International Atomic Energy Agency mission from getting to know the real state of affairs” at the Russian-held facility.
Russians ‘Spreading False Information’
“They spread manipulative and false information about this visit,” the company added in a statement shared to its Telegram channel.
Energoatom said it is clear that under such conditions it will be difficult for the IAEA to make an impartial assessment of the situation at Zaporizhzhia. It will be “impossible to implement all recommendations for restoring nuclear and radiation safety at the power plant provided by the [IAEA] mission while it is under the control of the Russian occupation forces”, the company said.
Asked earlier this week if the Russians would let the agency’s inspectors really see what is happening at the station, Grossi said “we are a team of very experienced people” in safeguards, safety and security and “we will have a pretty good idea of what’s going on”.
Grossi said an IAEA a presence at Zaporizhzhia is indispensable to stabilise the situation and to get regular, reliable, impartial, neutral updates of what the situation is there.
He said Zaporizhzhia is a Ukrainian facility and the IAEA’s competence to be there is clearly established in international nuclear safeguards agreements.
Russian troops captured the six-unit station, the largest in Europe and source of up to 20% of Ukraine’s energy needs, on 4 March 2022, but it is still run by Ukrainian technicians.
Kyiv has accused Russia of persistently shelling the station, but Moscow has said the shelling has come from Ukrainian forces.
One of the six reactors at a Russian-held nuclear plant in southern Ukraine was shut down earlier this week as an emergency protection measure after shelling in the area.
“Today at 4:57 am (3.57am Brussels), due to another mortar shelling by the Russian occupying forces at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant site, the emergency protection was activated and operating power Unit 5 was shut down,” Energoatom said on Thursday (1 September).
With only one unit at Zaporizhzhia in to operation, nine of Ukraine’s 15 nuclear energy reactors are connected to the grid. They are: one at Zaporizhzhia, three at Rivne, three at South Ukraine and two at the Khmelnitski.
