Ukraine: IAEA inspects Russian-held ZNPP, Sep 2022
On September 1st a team from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived to inspect the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in south-east Ukraine.
Russia captured the facility in March, soon after its launch of its large-scale invasion. Since then, the Ukrainian authorities have accused Russia of using it as a military base, while both sides have accused one another of shelling the plant, raising the risks of a nuclear accident, and evoking comparisons with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.
While the design of the Zaporizhzhia plant is said to be much safer that of the ill-fated one at Chernobyl, it still needs constant power supplies to maintain the cooling systems for the remaining two working reactors, and it is the severance or interruption of some these power lines during in the conflict that has raised fears of a radiation leak. In late August, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the Ukrainian president, warned that a nuclear catastrophe at the plant, threatening both Ukraine and Europe more widely, had narrowly been averted.
The working visit of the IAEA team is the result of some months of negotiation, and is styled as an “assistance mission”. The purpose is to make an independent assessment of any physical damage to the plant, and to determine whether nuclear safety and security protocols remain in place. Leaving the site after a few hours, Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, said that the physical integrity of the plant has been violated, but that IAEA inspectors would stay on at ZNPP to perform the necessary safety checks.
But what might be the outcome of the inspection? Russia has already rejected an earlier proposal to demilitarise the nuclear facility. Moreover, with its failure to take Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital; the scaled-back goal of securing full control of the Donbas proving elusive; and Ukrainian forces now mounting counterattacks in the south-east, control of the nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia remains a valuable “bargaining chip” for Russia.
Although a deliberate cutting of power to the reactor cooling systems to induce a nuclear crisis, and perhaps a radiation leak, cannot be ruled out in light of Russia official pronouncements, it would be a more reckless action, arguably, than any Russian forces have taken so far, with unforeseeable consequences—not least, that any radiation might blow back into Russia, or Crimea, depending on wind direction.
Russia captured the facility in March, soon after its launch of its large-scale invasion. Since then, the Ukrainian authorities have accused Russia of using it as a military base, while both sides have accused one another of shelling the plant, raising the risks of a nuclear accident, and evoking comparisons with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.
While the design of the Zaporizhzhia plant is said to be much safer that of the ill-fated one at Chernobyl, it still needs constant power supplies to maintain the cooling systems for the remaining two working reactors, and it is the severance or interruption of some these power lines during in the conflict that has raised fears of a radiation leak. In late August, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the Ukrainian president, warned that a nuclear catastrophe at the plant, threatening both Ukraine and Europe more widely, had narrowly been averted.
The working visit of the IAEA team is the result of some months of negotiation, and is styled as an “assistance mission”. The purpose is to make an independent assessment of any physical damage to the plant, and to determine whether nuclear safety and security protocols remain in place. Leaving the site after a few hours, Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, said that the physical integrity of the plant has been violated, but that IAEA inspectors would stay on at ZNPP to perform the necessary safety checks.
But what might be the outcome of the inspection? Russia has already rejected an earlier proposal to demilitarise the nuclear facility. Moreover, with its failure to take Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital; the scaled-back goal of securing full control of the Donbas proving elusive; and Ukrainian forces now mounting counterattacks in the south-east, control of the nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia remains a valuable “bargaining chip” for Russia.
Although a deliberate cutting of power to the reactor cooling systems to induce a nuclear crisis, and perhaps a radiation leak, cannot be ruled out in light of Russia official pronouncements, it would be a more reckless action, arguably, than any Russian forces have taken so far, with unforeseeable consequences—not least, that any radiation might blow back into Russia, or Crimea, depending on wind direction.
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