Zaporizhia nuclear power plant: the IAEA is once again sounding the alarm
After a shell hit the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine on Thursday morning, emergency generators are now powering it. The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, has once again sounded the alarm.
“Each time, we play with fire, and if we allow this situation to continue, one day our luck will change”he declared Thursday before the council of governors of the UN body, in Vienna, calling “everyone to commit to protecting security” of the site by creating a special area.
The head of the IAEA, who has been carrying out consultations with kyiv and Moscow for several months without success to set up a protection zone around the site, called on the international community to jump in. “We must commit to protecting the security of the site, and we must commit to it now”he launched, saying to himself ” surprised “ by current passivity. “What are we doing to prevent” an accident at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant?, he asked.
The IAEA has a team of experts in the Zaporijia plant, which is occupied by the Russian army and is regularly bombed. The site, victim according to kyiv of Russian missile attacks, was cut off from the electricity network “around 5 a.m.” for the first time since November and the sixth since the beginning of the war, specifies the Agency.
The twenty emergency generators have been activated, with emergency stocks allowing them to operate for a fortnight for a maximum lifespan of fifteen days. Electricity is essential to run the pumps ensuring the circulation of water. Because it is necessary to constantly cool the fuel of the cores of the reactors as well as that placed in the storage pools, to avoid a fusion accident and radioactive releases into the environment.