Ukraine<\/a> to visit Europe’s largest nuclear power plant Wednesday, and warned that it was easy to see evidence of intensified fighting in the area that poses a threat to the facility’s safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe increasing combat makes it urgent to find a way to prevent a potentially catastrophic nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, said Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is obvious that this area is facing perhaps a more dangerous phase,\u201d he said of the facility, which is in a partially Russian-occupied part of Ukraine. \u201cWe have to step up our efforts to get to some agreement of the protection of the plant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grossi has struggled to agree with Russian and Ukrainian authorities on a deal to secure the plant, which has been hit several times during the Ukraine war. The site has also suffered several losses of external power needed to cool its six shut-down reactors, forcing it to rely on emergency back-up generators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wednesday\u2019s visit to the plant was Grossi\u2019s second since the start of the war. He tried for months to negotiate on securing the whole zone around the complex, but he said at a news conference during his visit that the concept \u201cis evolving\u201d to focus more on protecting the plant itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grossi said he was working on \u201crealistic measures\u201d and had narrowed the scope in the hopes of reaching agreement on a mutually acceptable plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cInitially we were focusing on the possibility of the establishment of a well determined zone around the plant,\u201d he told reporters during his visit. \u201cNow the concept is evolving. It\u2019s refocusing more on the protection itself, and the things that should be avoided, for example, in order to protect the plant, rather than on territorial aspects, which pose certain problems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The IAEA, based in Vienna, Austria, has been rotating inspection teams at the power plant since Grossi’s visit in September. Grossi told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday that it is his duty to ramp up talks between Kyiv and Moscow aimed at safeguarding the facility and avoiding a catastrophic accident. He said a deal was \u201cclose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grossi met Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and said he would \u201cmost probably\u201d head to Moscow in the coming days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Zelenskyy said in a separate interview with AP that he was less optimistic a deal was near. \u201cI don\u2019t feel it today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro after his visit, Grossi said he saw clear signs of increased military activity in the area and assessed damage the plant sustained in shelling last November, which he described as \u201cquite severe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Buildings near two of the reactors were hit \u201cwittingly or unwittingly, … so this is very serious,\u201d he said, adding that his visit allowed him to confirm \u201cthe gravity … of the situation and the need for us to get to results as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He didn\u2019t give details of the evolving security plan, but said that \u201cnot using the plant as a military platform is very important\u201d as stationing heavy military equipment there can become a target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Equally, he said, there should be \u201cof course no attacks, no targeting. And we saw that at least until November, there were attacks. So I hope there won\u2019t be another one. But the reality and the facts prove that there have been.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Kremlin\u2019s forces took over the plant after Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Zelenskyy opposes any proposal that would legitimize Russia\u2019s control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interruptions to the outside electricity supply due to the fighting required plant personnel to switch to emergency diesel generators six times during the 13-month war. When backup power supplies might be needed again is unpredictable, Grossi told AP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ABC News: DNIPRO, Ukraine — The head of the U.N.\u2019s atomic energy watchdog crossed the front line in the war in Ukraine to visit Europe’s largest nuclear power plant Wednesday, and warned that it was easy to see evidence of intensified fighting in the area that poses a threat to the facility’s safety. The increasing combat makes it urgent to find a way to prevent a potentially catastrophic nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, said Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. \u201cIt is obvious that this area is facing perhaps a more dangerous… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31157,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31156"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31159,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31156\/revisions\/31159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}