MOSCOW, August 3. /TASS/. The authorities of the liberated area of the Zaporozhye Region welcome the plans by the leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit the nuclear power plant in Energodar, Yevgeny Balitsky, the head of the region’s military-civilian administration said on his Telegram channel on Wednesday.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said at a conference of the countries - parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons on August 1 that the UN nuclear watchdog’s delegation was ready to visit the Zaporozhye NPP.
"We wholly welcome that the IAEA head is going to visit Europe’s largest nuclear power plant," Balitsky said.
The authorities of the liberated Zaporozhye Region are ready to demonstrate to the UN nuclear watchdog’s mission how Russian troops are ensuring safety and security at the NPP in Energodar and how the Kiev regime is using the West-supplied weapons for its attempts to attack the facility, the region’s head said.
"We are ready to show how the Russian military personnel are protecting it today and how Ukraine that is receiving armaments from the West is using these weapons, including drones, for attacks on the nuclear power plant, behaving like a monkey with a grenade. It is completely unclear what reactor they will target with their next drone, capturing attention and how this may end up for the whole of Europe and the entire world," Balitsky stressed.
The Ukrainian military delivered a drone strike overnight to July 30 against a humanitarian convoy delivering cargo to Energodar, destroying the mission’s vehicles and damaging three apartment blocks, a food store, a hotel and a hostel of the Zaporozhye NPP.
Overnight to July 28, the Kiev regime delivered a drone strike against the settlement of the Zaporozhye NPP staff in Energodar, causing no casualties and damaging a residential building.
On July 20, three Ukrainian kamikaze drones struck the premises of the Zaporozhye NPP. The station’s reactors were undamaged and the radiation background was normal. The Ukrainian army’s strikes injured 11 employees of the Zaporozhye NPP, with four of them in severe condition.
IAEA Director General Grossi said at a meeting of the organization’s board of governors on June 6 that the agency was working on creating conditions for sending a mission of experts to the Zaporozhye NPP. The Ukrainian company Energoatom spoke against the visit of IAEA experts, arguing that it had not invited Grossi to the nuclear power plant and had previously denied him this visit.
Zaporozhye NPP
The Zaporozhye NPP is the largest in Europe and has a capacity of about 6,000 MW. It used to generate a quarter of all electric power in Ukraine. The Zaporozhye NPP consists of six power units and from 1996 it operated as a detached unit of the Energoatom national nuclear power generating company controlled by Kiev.
In March 2022, the Zaporozhye NPP was placed under the Russian army’s control. Currently, the NPP operates at 70% capacity, as the area of the Zaporozhye Region liberated from the Ukrainian army has a surplus of electricity power. There are plans to direct part of electricity generated at the Zaporozhye NPP to Crimea.