(Vienna) The International Atomic Energy Agency (AEIA) said on Monday it had received reports that artillery shells had damaged a nuclear research facility in Ukraine’s second besieged city, Kharkiv, without “radiological consequences”.
Posted yesterday at 9:31 p.m.
According to the Vienna-based UN body, Ukrainian authorities reported that an attack took place on Sunday, adding that no increase in radiation levels had been reported at the site.
The affected facility is part of the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, a research institute that produces radioactive material for medical and industrial applications.
But “the site’s inventory of radioactive materials is very low” argued the IAEA, assuring that “the damage […] reported would have had no radiological consequences. »
“We have already experienced several episodes compromising the security of Ukrainian nuclear sites,” said IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi.
In recent days, Kharkiv has been the target of heavy shelling and missile fire from Russia, as Moscow attempts to increase pressure on Ukraine to surrender.
The Russian army has occupied since Friday the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, in the south-east of Ukraine, where strikes from its artillery, according to the Ukrainians, caused a fire – which Moscow denies being the origin.
PHOTO STATE EMERGENCY SERVICES OF UKRA, VIA REUTERS
The Russian army has occupied since Friday the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, in the south-east of Ukraine, where strikes from its artillery, according to the Ukrainians, caused a fire – which Moscow denies being the origin.
Only two of the plant’s six reactors are active.
The director general of the IAEA said on Friday that he was ready to go to Chernobyl, the scene of a major nuclear accident in 1986 and the first Ukrainian site to fall into the hands of Russian soldiers on February 24.