Russian operators at an occupied nuclear plant in southern Ukraine continue to ignore requests from safety regulators to bring the last partly-operational reactor under their supervision into a state of full shutdown.
(Bloomberg) — Russian operators at an occupied nuclear plant in southern Ukraine continue to ignore requests from safety regulators to bring the last partly-operational reactor under their supervision into a state of full shutdown.
Ukraine nuclear-safety officials have repeatedly called in recent days on operators at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to stop producing heat and steam at the sole reactor that hasn’t entered so-called cold shutdown. Water supplies needed for cooling have become increasingly tenuous following the June destruction of a hydropower dam that held water in a neighboring reservoir.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has four inspectors on site at the plant, said on Friday it too has urged unit No. 5 to be completely turned off but has been rebuffed by operators at the Kremlin-controlled nuclear giant, Rosatom Corp., according to Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi. While the agency prefers a full shutdown, the decision isn’t “a matter of life and death,” he said.
“We have expressed our views that it should be put in cold shutdown,” Grossi said in an interview from Tokyo. “The management of the plant feels otherwise.”
The chairman of Rosatom’s supervisory board, Sergei Kiriyenko, who’s also the Kremlin’s first deputy chief of staff, visited the plant on Friday and said in a statement that the facility remains safe.
The case underscores the limitations of the IAEA’s presence at Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s biggest nuclear plant with six reactors designed to generate a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity. It’s been occupied by Russia’s military since the start of the conflict. A permanent team of IAEA inspectors arrived in September but their access to the plant and decision making power is limited.
The IAEA team is conducting “very rigorous” inspections of the sprawling plant every day, said Grossi, adding he’d like to install two or three additional monitors to track more activity at the facility. This week, the agency requested further access to the rooftops covering the reactors after accusations that they could be mined with explosives.
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Safety concerns intensified at the plant this week after suggestions it could be the target of fresh attacks, with Kyiv and Moscow trading accusations over the risk of a radiological incident. It’s been the target of artillery, drone and rocket attacks on and off for more than a year, with Ukrainian and Russian official blaming each other for the strikes.
“We are taking this very, very seriously,” Grossi said. “But we also see a use of public space to create panic.”
–With assistance from Jon Herskovitz.
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