The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has expressed concerns about the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which he claims cannot be guaranteed while it remains occupied by Russian forces. Zelenskyy made the comments during a meeting with Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in the city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday. The Ukrainian President stated that staff at the plant were under constant pressure from Russian occupying forces who were failing to uphold safety rules and interfering in technological processes. He added that without an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops and staff from the facility and adjacent areas, any initiatives on restoring nuclear safety and security would be doomed to failure.
The Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power facility, was seized by Moscow’s forces early in the war, and Russian and Ukrainian forces regularly accuse each other of risking a serious nuclear accident by shelling the facility. The ongoing fighting around the plant and concerns that its cooling systems could lose power have raised fears of a nuclear disaster. The plant’s six reactors are currently in shutdown mode, and the facility is receiving the electricity it needs to prevent a reactor meltdown through just one remaining power line. The plant has had to switch to emergency diesel generators to power its essential cooling systems as power from the main grid has been cut by shelling.
Earlier this month, fighting interrupted power supply to the plant for half a day, forcing staff to activate the backup generators. Grossi expressed alarm at that development, stating that “each time we are rolling a dice…if we allow this to continue time after time, then one day our luck will run out.” Russian officials have said they want to connect the Zaporizhzhia plant to the Russian power grid.
Grossi has repeatedly called for a safety zone around the Zaporizhzhia plant and is due to visit it again this week. The IAEA said in January that it was placing teams of experts at all four of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants to reduce the risk of accidents, including the now-closed Chernobyl plant whose deadly nuclear accident in 1986 spread fallout over much of Europe.
Zelenskyy also told Grossi on Monday about problems caused by Russian attacks at the Dnipro hydropower plant. Ukraine is trying to give hydropower facilities “maximum protection” by hiding equipment underground as it repairs an estimated $1bn in damage from Russian attacks that have targeted the country’s power infrastructure. Ihor Syrota, head of state-run hydropower generating company Ukrhydroenergo, said on Monday that four of Ukraine’s nine hydropower plants had been damaged in Russian attacks that mainly targeted electrical equipment and machine rooms at plants on the Dnieper and Dniester rivers.
He added that the nine hydropower plants usually produce about 10 percent of Ukraine’s energy and have a combined capacity of 6,300 megawatts (MW), but that about 2,000 MW of that capacity had been lost because of damage to infrastructure. Engineers have already restored 500 MW of capacity and plan to restore the rest as soon as possible, this time with better protection. Syrota said, “We will hide electrical equipment at existing stations…if we have a new project – we are of course reviewing it – everything that was previously supposed to be on the surface will have a different structure, we will hide it [underground].”
In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy stated that holding a nuclear power station hostage for more than a year was surely the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of European or worldwide nuclear power. He warned that the longer Russia occupies the Zaporizhzhia plant, the greater the threat to the security of Ukraine, Europe, and the world.