The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is calling for a “security protection zone” to be established around the damaged Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as UN inspectors found the plant in worse shape than originally believed.
“The first important safety pillar that exists in any nuclear facility is not to violate its physical integrity,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said Tuesday. “And unfortunately…this has happened. This happened and this continues to happen. The physical attack, wittingly or unwittingly – the hits that this facility has received and that I could personally see and assess together with my experts – is simply unacceptable.”
Ukraine agreed to the security zone patrolled by UN troops as long as it was “demilitarized,” but Russia said they would have to think about it.
“There is a need to get additional clarifications because the report contains a number of issues,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters. “I will not list them, but we requested these clarifications from the IAEA Director General.”
Meanwhile, the IAEA ordered the evacuation of the town of Enerhodar, the main town serving the plant, as well as other districts close to the plant.
“While the ongoing shelling has not yet triggered a nuclear emergency, it continues to represent a constant threat to nuclear safety and security with potential impact on critical safety functions that may lead to radiological consequences with great safety significance,” the report said.
The monitors reported seeing Russian military equipment parked inside buildings, damage to the facilities that posed a hazard to workers, and restrictions on the plant’s Ukrainian operators to access certain parts of the facility, including to plant’s cooling ponds.
The pressure on plant employees is unprecedented. According to Dmytro Orlov, the exiled mayor of Enerhodar, the intervals between shelling are getting shorter, meaning the employees have less time to make repairs before the shelling starts up again.
“The situation in Ukraine is unprecedented,” the United Nations nuclear watchdog warned. “It is the first time a military conflict has occurred amid the facilities of a large, established nuclear power” program, it said in a report.
A nuclear accident would be a disaster not just for Ukraine, but also for the countries “beyond its borders,” it said.
“We in this case have the historical, ethical imperative to prevent something from happening,” Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA, later told the U.N. Security Council.
Ukraine is Vladimir Putin’s tar baby. No matter how hard Putin fights, he just gets more and more entangled in the mess. And now the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has Putin tangled up good and proper with no briar patch that Putin can be thrown in to allow his extrication.
We can only hope that he can figure out a way to untangle himself before he irradiates a big chunk of the world’s arable land.
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