VIENNA (Reuters) – The security of Ukraine’s Russian-controlled Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is deteriorating day by day, Ukraine’s energy minister said on Friday.
The Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), made up of 35 countries, adopted a resolution late Thursday condemning Russia’s occupation of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. They say they are “gravely concerned” about the lack of staff and maintenance at the site two years after its capture.
“The general situation is developing towards a nuclear accident and it is very important to immediately end this (Russian) presence,” Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said at a press conference.
The IAEA, which has a modest presence there, believes that the situation in Zaporizhzhia remains precarious. The plant has been without external power eight times in the past 18 months, forcing it to rely on diesel generators to cool the fuel in its reactors and avoid a potentially catastrophic meltdown.
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“The nuclear power plant staff now consists exclusively of former Energoatom employees who have become Russian citizens, with employment contracts signed with the Russian operating entity, as well as personnel sent from the Russian Federation,” says a confidential IAEA report sent to member states last week, which Reuters had access to.
Before the war, the plant had about 11,500 employees, according to the report. Today, that number would be around 4,500, with 2,000 employees present every day during the last quarter, according to IAEA staff on site.
“The problem is not even in the quantity of personnel. The problem is that they are qualified personnel. It is not (…) average-level personnel that we can easily replace”, declared the Director General of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, who had a “professional and frank” discussion with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in Russia.
(Reporting François Murphy; French version Mathias de Rozario; edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
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