Agency said mines found in restricted area inaccessible to plant personnel
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials have confirmed that there are mines in close proximity to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, currently under Russian occupation.
IAEA experts have seen directional anti-personnel mines on the periphery of the site, the agency’s director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi said on Monday (24 July).
On Sunday the IAEA team saw some mines in a buffer zone between the site’s internal and external perimeter barriers. The team reported that they were in a restricted area that operating plant personnel cannot access and were facing away from the site. The team did not see any within the inner site perimeter.
“As I have reported earlier, the IAEA has been aware of the previous placement of mines outside the site perimeter and also at particular places inside,” Grossi said.
“Our team has raised this specific finding with the plant and they have been told that it is a military decision, and in an area controlled by military.”
But Grossi warned that having such explosives on the site is inconsistent with the IAEA safety standards and nuclear security guidance and creates additional psychological pressure on plant staff.
He said the IAEA’s initial assessment based on its own observations and the plant’s clarifications is that any detonation of these mines should not affect the site’s nuclear safety and security systems.
In recent days and weeks, IAEA staff at the six-unit Zaporizhzhia, which is on the frontline of fighting in southeast Ukraine, have carried out inspections and regular walkdowns across the site, without seeing any heavy military equipment.
Agency Wants Access To Roofs
The IAEA is continuing to request access to the roofs of the station’s reactors and their turbine halls, including units 3 and 4 which are of it said are of “particular interest”.
Also over the weekend, Zaporizhzhia temporarily lost its connection to the main 750 kilovolt (kV) power line and relied on a single 330 kV backup line for offsite electricity for some eight hours on Saturday, without any consequences to nuclear safety and security on site.
The cause was a technical failure in one of the switchyards some distance away from the site.
The IAEA said the event once again highlighted the site’s fragile external power situation during the military conflict. Nuclear power plants need power for reactor cooling and other essential nuclear safety and security functions.
The plant has begun its planned transition of Unit 4 from cold to hot shutdown with the plant expected to reach hot shutdown status on 25 July.
Once that is done, reactor Unit 5 – now in hot shutdown – will be placed in cold shutdown to carry out preventive maintenance that is only possible in cold shutdown.
The other units remain in cold shutdown. The Ukraine national regulator, SNRIU, has issued regulatory orders to limit the operation of all six units to a cold shutdown state.
