ENERGODAR, June 15. /TASS/. Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi is expected to visit the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) on Thursday to assess the situation at the facility following the collapse of the Kakhovka Hydropower Plant and rotate the agency’s inspectors.
Grossi said on June 6 that he planned to lead the agency’s expert mission to the ZNPP next week. The said that the agency wanted to expand its presence at the plant following the Kakhovka HPP dam burst. He did not say however when exactly the visit would take place.
Grossi visited Kiev on June 13. He told journalists that after the news conference he would go to the ZNPP where he planned to spend several hours to see the situation with his own eyes. Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the director general of Russia’s Rosenergoatom nuclear power engineering company, told TASS earlier that with a high degree of probability Grossi will visit the ZNPP on Thursday.
The IAEA chief visited the Zaporozhye NPP for the first time on September 1, 2022. Following his visit, the IAEA established its presence at the facility. Grossi’s seconf visit took place on March 29, 2023.
IAEA mission’s expansion
According to Karchaa, the IAEA’s mission will be expanded twofold, to four experts. He noted that the situation around the ZNPP is among top priorities for Grossi, who is really concerned with the developments around it. He described the IAEA chief’s intention to take part in the rotation as a positive signal.
The previous rotation of IAEA inspectors at the Zaporozhye NPP took place on April 27 without any incident. The eighth group made up of Australians and Slovakians is to be replaced by experts from Argentina, Ireland, and Morocco. The ninth team of IAEA experts was to arrive at the ZNPP on May 25 but this was postponed at Ukraine’s request. According to Karchaa, Russia has not received the relevant note from the UN Department of Safety and Security. He did not rule out that Ukraine was plotting a provocation to freeze this process, "as it used to do."
Situation at ZNPP
The agency said on June 7 that the ZNPP continued to pump water for cooling the reactors from Kakhovka reservoir but the water level there was lowering following the dam burst. If all ZNPP’s cooling water ponds are filled, there will be enough water to cool the reactors and spent fuel for several months, it said.
Grossi said on June 13 that there is no direct threat to the Zaporozhye NPP after the collapse of the Kakhovka Hydropower Plant. However, the IAEA had received information that the water level in the area of the Zaporozhye thermal power plant could be two meters higher than in the rest of the reservoir and IAEA experts wanted to have access to the ZTPP to find out why.
The plant’s press service said earlier that works had been carried out to ensure uninterrupted water supplies to the ZNPP. Currently, five out of its reactors are in a clod shutdown more and one - in a hot shutdown mode, with the water level in the cooling water pond being unchanged amounting to 16.67 meters.
On the morning of June 6, the Ukrainian military launched a missile attack on the Kakhovka HPP, which resulted in the destruction of gate sluice valves at the HPP’s dam, triggering an uncontrolled discharge of water. Some experts expressed concern that the lowering of the water level in the Kakhovka reservoir may lead to an emergency at the ZNPP. However, Karchaa and the plant’s administration pledged that Russia would be able to ensure the facility’s nuclear safety in any event, since the ZNPP’s cooling water ponds represent a closed cycles and could be replenished from external sources.
Located in the city of Energodar, Europe’s largest Zaporozhye NPP has six power units with an aggregate capacity of 6 GW. Russian forces took control of the facility in February 2022. Since then, Ukrainian troops have been periodically shelled both Energodar’s residential quarters and the plant’s territory. According to the Russian defense ministry, Ukrainian troops delivered several strikes on the plant’s territory in recent days with the use of drones, heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems. Most of such attacks were repelled by air defense systems but several shells hit infrastructure facilities and near the nuclear waste storage area.