Staff rotation at the Chernobyl nuclear power station is now “taking place regularly and according to plan”, three weeks after Russian forces withdrew from the site, International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi said, while also announcing he will head an expert mission to the site of the 1986 accident next week

Mr Grossi said the staff rotations represented major progress both for the well-being of the facility’s personnel – who have been living and working under extremely stressful circumstances during the conflict – and for the safe and secure operation of the plant.

Ukraine told the IAEA on 10 April that it had carried out the first staff rotation at Chernobyl in three weeks and only the second since Russian forces seized the site on 24 February and held it for five weeks.