Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, spent hours running on emergency diesel generators on Monday after losing external power supplies for the seventh time since the large-scale invasion of its neighbor by Russia, said the head of the UN nuclear watchdog.
“The nuclear security situation at the plant (is) extremely vulnerable,” Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a tweet.
Hours later, the national energy company Ukrenergo told Telegram that it had restored the power line that feeds the plant.
But for Grossi, it was another reminder of what’s at stake Plant occupied by the Russians that has seen bombing nearby.
“Repeated blackouts are clearly unsustainable. This is the seventh time that Europe’s largest nuclear power plant has been on emergency generators. The time to agree on plant protection is now. No it’s impossible. The whole world is watching,” Grossi, who is traveling in China, told CBS News’ Pamela Falk on Monday morning.
The plant’s six nuclear reactors, which are protected by a reinforced jacket capable of withstanding an errant shell or rocket, have been shut down. But a power outage could disable cooling systems that are essential to the safety of the reactors even when they are shut down. Emergency diesel generators, which officials say can keep the plant operating for 10 days, can be unreliable.
great plans to propose a protocol to protect the plant from shelling. The agency has been trying to secure a deal for a demilitarized zone established around the sprawling plant complex, which has been hit by rockets several times and had its connection to Ukraine’s power grid. cut repeatedlyforcing him to rely on emergency generators.
“We must avoid the catastrophe,” You got dirty in March, when he made his second visit to the site.
“It is obvious that this area is facing perhaps a more dangerous phase. We must intensify our efforts to reach an agreement to protect the plant,” he told reporters at the time.
AP
Fighting, especially artillery fire, around the plant has fueled fears of a disaster like that of Chernobylin northern Ukraine in 1986. Then a reactor exploded and released deadly radiation, contaminating a vast area in the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear company, blamed Russian bombing for the loss of the last high-voltage transmission line at the plant in Russian-held southern Ukraine, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) from Kiev It was not possible to independently verify this claim.
The facility is “on the brink of a nuclear and radiation accident,” Energoatom warned. After the power line was restored, Energoatom described the situation as “stabilized.”
Grossi said it was the seventh time the floor had lost its external energy supply since the large-scale invasion of Russia in February 2022.
Ukraine believes the only way to secure the plant is to return it to Ukrainian control, with IAEA inspectors present. “The Russians must withdraw military personnel,” Ukraine’s UN ambassador Sergi Kyslytsya told CBS News on Monday.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant “is in a war zone under almost constant bombardment”, the President of the UN General Assembly, Csaba Kőrösi, intervened on Monday from Vienna, where he visited the laboratories of the IAEA.
“We are testing our luck,” Kőrösi said, adding, “the outcome could be more dangerous than what happened in Chernobyl many, many years ago.”
“We can’t play around with a nuclear Armageddon.”
Zaporizhzhia NPP is one of the 10 largest nuclear power plants in the world.
Russian officials have begun training for a planned evacuation of the plant’s 3,100 workers and their families, an Energoatom representative said last week. The plant employed about 11,000 workers before the war, about 6,000 of whom remain on the site and in the surrounding town of Enerhodar.
More Russian military units have arrived at the site and are blasting it, the representative told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
Meanwhile, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said a group of Ukrainian Armed Forces saboteurs entered the local town of Graivoron, about five kilometers (three miles) from the border , which also came under Ukrainian artillery fire.
Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said Russian forces “are taking the necessary measures to liquidate the enemy”. He did not elaborate.
But Ukrainian military intelligence officials did not confirm that Kiev had deployed saboteurs and claimed that Russian citizens seeking regime change in Moscow were behind the Graivoron attack.
Ukrainian intelligence representative Andrii Cherniak said Russian citizens belonging to groups calling themselves the Russian Volunteer Corps and the “Freedom of Russia” Legion were behind the assault.
The Russian Volunteer Corps claimed in a Telegram post that it had crossed the border into Russia again.
The Russian Volunteer Corps describes itself as “a volunteer formation fighting on the side of Ukraine.” Little is known about the group, and it is unclear whether it has any ties to the Ukrainian military.
The group was founded last August and is said to consist mainly of Russian far-right anti-Putin extremists with ties to Ukrainian far-right groups.
Ukraine’s presidential office said Monday morning that at least three Ukrainian civilians were killed and 16 others wounded in Russian attacks over the previous 24 hours.
The Ukrainian Air Force reported that four of the 16 Russian missiles and 20 drones launched against Ukrainian targets were shot down.
Military targets and public infrastructure in Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city in the center of the country, were targeted by the Russian attacks, which wounded eight people, officials said. Dnipro’s fire department was hit and 12 houses, shops and a kindergarten were damaged, according to Governor Serhii Lysak.
Pamela Falk contributed to this report.
Month
