VIENNA, September 1. /TASS/. IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi has stressed the importance of keeping a dialogue going with Russia on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).
"We have a level of dialogue (with Russia - TASS). <…> By being there [at the plant] we have been able to avoid fake news. We have been able to avoid false narratives that could be emerging from this situation," Grossi said, speaking at the Bled Strategic Forum.
He stressed that this dialogue helps with the all-important goal of preventing a nuclear conflict. "For this we have established a number of principles, which boil down to ‘don't shoot at a nuclear power plant, please.’ They have a more technical formulation, but we have been able to implement this by and large," he noted.
The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant is a Russian facility located on the shore of the Kakhovka Reservoir in Energodar. It is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, with six power units and a total capacity of 6 GW. Since 2022, the Ukrainian army has shelled residential areas of Energodar and the plant’s territory with artillery and attacked it with drones. Since September 2022, experts from the IAEA Secretariat have been permanently stationed at the facility, with their composition regularly rotated.