The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency has been in consultations with world leaders on shelling over the weekend at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station and is insisting that agreeing and implementing a nuclear safety and security protection zone around the facility “must happen now”.

Rafael Grossi said even though there was no direct impact on key nuclear safety and security systems at the station, the shelling came “dangerously close” to them.

We are talking metres, not kilometres,” he said. “Whoever is shelling at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is taking huge risks and gambling with many people’s lives.”

Grossi has been proposing  a nuclear safety and security protection zone around the six-unit facility in soutern Ukraine since September and has held talks with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian rwsident Vladimir Putin.

The IAEA said repeated shelling on Saturday evening (19 November) and on Sunday morning (20 November) damaged buildings, systems and equipment, with some of the explosions occurring near the reactors.