UNITED NATIONS, August 15. /TASS/. A visit by IAEA inspectors to the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant is possible from Kiev, UN Secretary General’s Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Monday.
"In close contact with the IAEA, the UN Secretariat has assessed that Ukraine has the logistics and security capacity to be able to support any IAEA mission to the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant from Kiev, should both Russia and Ukraine agree," he said.
"In the past few days, there have been repeated comments by various Russian officials accusing the United Nations Secretariat of having either cancelled or blocked a visit by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant," he said. "The IAEA is a specialized agency that acts in full independence in deciding how to implement its specific mandate. The UN Secretariat has no authority to block or cancel any IAEA activities."
On June 3, the Russian side and the IAEA secretariat agreed the route and schedule of the movement of the agency’s international mission to the Zaporozhye NPP. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi planned to lead the mission. According to the Russian foreign ministry, the IAEA mission to the Zaporozhye plant was canceled by the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) at the very last minute.
Located in the city of Energodar, the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant is controlled by Russian troops. In recent days, Ukrainian forces delivered several strikes at its territory using unmanned aerial vehicles, heavy artillery and multiple rocket launch systems. In most cases, such attacks are repelled by air defense systems but several shells hit infrastructure facilities and the vicinity of the nuclear waste storage.
The Zaporozhye NPP is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. With a capacity of around 6,000 megawatt, it generated a fourth of Ukraine’s electricity. Since 1996, it was part of Ukraine’s Energoatom generating company. In March 2022, control over the nuclear plant came over to Russian forces. Now, the plant is operating at 70% of its capacity due to the oversupply of electricity on the liberated territories of the Zaporozhye region. It is planned to supply electricity from the plant to Crimea.