MOSCOW, April 7. /TASS/. Russia’s state nuclear power corporation Rosatom has urged the leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the European Union to react to the direct threat to the security of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and condemn the situation around Europe’s largest nuclear facility.
"The Rosatom state corporation resolutely condemns an unprecedented attack on the nuclear station’s facilities and infrastructure and urges the IAEA leadership, Mr. Rafael Grossi, the agency’s director general, personally, as well as the governments of EU countries to immediately react to the direct threat to the security of the Zaporozhye NPP and resolutely condemn an attempt to escalate the situation around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant," the agency said in a statement.
On Sunday, Ukrainian troops carried out a series of unprecedented strikes on the ZNPP’s premises, wounding three employees and hitting the dome of one of the power units. The facility’s press service specified that the radiation background at the nuclear power plant remains within normal limits.
Located in Energodar, the Zaporozhye nuclear facility, with roughly 6GW of capacity, is the largest of its kind in Europe. Russia took control of the plant on February 28, 2022, in the first days of its special military operation in Ukraine. Since then, units of the Ukrainian army have periodically conducted shelling both of residential districts in nearby Energodar and the premises of the nuclear plant itself, by means of drones, heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS). In most cases, air defense systems repel the attacks, although several times shells hit infrastructure facilities and the vicinity of a nuclear waste storage depot. In order to protect the ZNPP against shelling attacks, engineering structures, forming a safety net of sorts, have been built on its premises.