There is a risk of “spray of radioactive substances” at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporijjia, occupied by Russian troops, the Ukrainian public operator warned on Saturday. According to EnergoAtom, Russian troops have “several times shelled over the past day” the site.
The disconnection of two reactors on Thursday, which were reconnected on Friday evening, would not be the cause of this risk. “The plant’s infrastructure has been damaged, and there are risks of hydrogen leakage and spraying of radioactive substances,” the agency said on Telegram, adding that there was “a high fire risk and that the damage was being assessed.
Mutual accusations between Russians and Ukrainians
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry accused Ukrainian forces of bombing the plant complex three times in the past 24 hours. “A total of 17 shells were fired, four of which hit the roof of Special Building No. 1, where 168 US nuclear fuel assemblies WestingHouse are stored,” the ministry said in a statement.
Ten shells are said to have exploded near a dry storage facility for used nuclear fuel and three others near a building housing the storage of new nuclear fuel. But, the ministry said, the radiation situation at the plant is normal.
None of this information can be independently verified in the field. As Hervé Bodineau, expert at the IRSN (Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety) reminded our newspaper on Friday, “Today, to our knowledge, the Ukrainian nuclear safety authority no longer has access to the nuclear power plant. and we must take the information that comes from the operator (EnergoAtom) with caution, because we do not know under what conditions it is issued”.
For days, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been asking for a mission to be sent to the plant “as soon as possible to help stabilize the nuclear safety and security situation”. Emmanuel Macron, Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz and Boris Johnson support this request, which Vladimir Putin has not rejected. But the days pass and the IAEA inspectors still do not seem to have the date of their visit.