VIENNA, April 7. /TASS/. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi, commenting on a drone attack on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), has urged those responsible for military decisions to refrain from any violations of nuclear facilities’ security principles.
"I firmly appeal to military decision makers to abstain from any action violating the basic principles that protect nuclear facilities," he said on the X social network.
"Today, for the first time since Nov 2022 & after I set out 5 basic principles to avoid a serious nuclear accident w/radiological consequences, @IAEAorg’s #ISAMZ confirmed that at least 3 direct hits against ZNPP main reactor containment structures took place. This cannot happen," Grossi said.
"As I said before the @UN Security Council #UNSC and the @IAEAorg Board of Governors, no one can conceivably benefit or get any military or political advantage from attacks against nuclear facilities," the IAEA chief added.
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.