(United Nations) The situation is “volatile” at the Zaporijjia nuclear power plant (south) under Russian control since the beginning of March, worried on Tuesday the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is continuing its efforts to send a mission there.
Posted at 4:40 p.m.
“The situation is really volatile,” said Rafael Grossi during a press conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York where a conference of the 191 signatory states of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is being held.
“All safety principles have been violated in one way or another. And we cannot allow this to continue,” he added. At the opening of the meeting on Monday, he had already stressed that the situation was becoming “more and more dangerous day by day”.
Hence his efforts for weeks to send a mission to inspect the plant. Mission so far refused by Ukraine, which considers that this would legitimize the Russian occupation of the site in the eyes of the international community, the Ukrainian operator Energoatom explained a few weeks ago.
“Going there is very complex because it requires the agreement and cooperation of a number of actors”, in particular Ukraine and Russia, and the support of the United Nations, as it is an area of war, Rafael Grossi noted on Tuesday.
“I try to set up a mission as quickly as possible,” he said.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of using this plant, the largest in Europe, “as a military base to fire on the Ukrainians knowing that they cannot retaliate because they would risk hitting a nuclear reactor or highly radioactive waste”.
“It takes the notion of a human shield to a completely different and terrible level,” he added, insisting that the IAEA have access to the site.
In 2021, the plant supplied 20% of Ukraine’s annual electricity production and 47% of that produced by the Ukrainian nuclear fleet.