War: Fresh Shelling Hits Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

Fresh shelling has been reported in Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

EKO HOT BLOG reports that Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant came under renewed shelling on Saturday as fraught negotiations to allow for a team of scientists from the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the facility took on added urgency.

The United Nation’s nuclear watchdog has assembled a team of experts to visit the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Ukraine — Europe’s largest nuclear power station — as early as next week.

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A list of the team’s members seen by The New York Times includes the nuclear agency’s chief, Rafael Mariano Grossi of Argentina, and 13 other experts from mostly neutral countries. Neither the United States nor Britain, countries that Russia scorns as unfairly biased because of their strong support for Ukraine, is represented.

The I.A.E.A. headquarters in Vienna declined to comment on the planned mission. A spokesman confirmed that the agency was “in active consultations for an imminent I.A.E.A. mission” to the plant.

But even as the details of a possible visit to the plant took shape, Russia and Ukraine on Saturday again blamed each other for shelling the facility.

Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency, Energoatom, said Russia shelled the plant late Friday and into Saturday morning. It accused Russian forces of increasing pressure on the plant’s staff ahead of a possible I.A.E.A. visit “to prevent them from disclosing evidence about the crimes of the occupiers at the plant and its use as a military base.”

Within minutes of Energoatom’s statement, Russia’s Ministry of Defense put out its own statement saying that Ukraine had fired shells at the plant in the past 24 hours.
Both the Russians and the Ukrainians said radiation levels remained within normal range.

The plant has come under sporadic shelling since early August, although the extent of the damage remains unclear. Critical infrastructure around the plant has also been shelled and on Thursday the plant temporarily lost its off-site electrical power after a critical high-voltage wire was damaged, forcing it to rely on on-site backup power.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in an address to the nation late Friday that the episode had brought it perilously close to disaster, making the need for a visit by international inspectors even more urgent.

“I want to emphasize that the situation remains very risky and dangerous,” Mr. Zelensky said. “That is why it is so important that the I.A.E.A. mission arrives at the plant as soon as possible.”

Despite mounting international anxiety over a possible catastrophe at the sprawling plant, in the middle of a war zone, Russia and Ukraine have for weeks failed to agree on a plan that would allow inspectors to visit. The shelling is complicating those discussions.

The warring nations have haggled over the composition of an inspection team and whether it would travel to the plant through territory occupied by Russian forces or controlled by the government in Kyiv.

Ukraine has insisted that the inspectors start out from government-controlled territory, to avoid giving legitimacy to the Russian occupation.

That means the inspectors would have to pass through frontline positions where shelling is frequent and would probably use a crossing point already crowded with civilians fleeing the fighting and nuclear dangers. Any deal is likely to require a cease-fire along the route.