The intruder of the news gives each evening a spotlight on a personality who could have passed under the radars of the news.
His first visit to the Zaporijjia power plant in September had already made an impression. For his second, the Director General of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) arrived on Wednesday March 29 aboard a Russian army armored vehicle, flanked by soldiers in combat gear, under the eye of the journalists who had been invited by the Russians. We are in an occupied zone and with “increasing military activity”, believes Rafael Grossi. He is worried about this and hopes, from this trip, that the two countries agree on some commitments, at least that of not attacking the plant. At this point, the Ukrainians are still demanding the withdrawal of troops from Moscow. And Moscow accuses kyiv of wanting to take over the site by force, in defiance of the risk involved.
>>> War in Ukraine: the IAEA president tries to find a compromise on the Zaporijjia nuclear power plant
In any case, Rafael Grossi’s total commitment to this dossier earned him his reappointment at the beginning of the month by unanimous acclamation of the 35 members of the IAEA’s Board of Governors after having imposed, it is said, a “bold “during his first term. He was also very active on the Iranian nuclear side, going several times to Tehran.
Not a nuclear technician, but a diplomat
Rafael Grossi is 62 years old, he has eight children. He is Argentinian, he is also the first South American to lead the IAEA since its creation in 1957. He succeeded in 2019 to the Japanese Yukiya Amano who had just died after 10 years in office. He is not a nuclear technician, but a diplomat. He studied political science at the Catholic University of Argentina before becoming a doctor in international relations and international politics in Geneva. A career as a classic diplomat, first at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before heading the Argentinian embassies in Belgium and Luxembourg. While officiating at the same time at NATO, then at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. Since 2013, he had been Argentina’s ambassador to Vienna in Austria and already represented his country within the IAEA before taking over its leadership.
>>> An incident would affect a billion human beings: in Zaporizhia, fighting around the nuclear power plant continues and concern remains
It is therefore as a diplomat that he has been trying for a year to put an end to the fighting around the Zaporijjia power station. He meets Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky, exchange with the Russian Vladimir Putin and with the heads of state of the whole world. But he also arrived today with three IAEA inspectors who come to relieve the team on site. A team that monitors the security of the site still operated by Ukrainians who have remained, even managed by Russians. This is what he said here in an interview with BFMTV at the end of November in impeccable French! “It’s an incredible, unprecedented, paradoxical situation”he explained. The plant operators are still the Ukrainians who were there. It is a plant that for a while had 12,000 employees. There are more or less 4000 working there. They deserve a thumbs up from the entire international community. It’s a nuclear power plant, it’s a huge risk. I am very happy to have been able to set up an IAEA unit on site. They are doing heroically.” Today, the plant no longer produces electricity except for an essential task: to cool the reactors when they are stopped and to avoid overheating which would be disastrous. But even this production is regularly interrupted.
A special relationship with the French language
In the many interviews he gives to the French-speaking media, in any case, his impeccable French is surprising. The Argentinian does not have French origins, however. He learned it at school, then at the Alliance Française in Buenos Aires. Rafael Grossi explains that French – literature, theater, or French cinema – have always held a central place in his life. His children speak it as fluently as Spanish. According to his positions, he himself began to speak Dutch, German necessarily and English of course. But in this profession of diplomat, he affirms that not a day goes by without him having an interview or a phone call to make in French.