Europe’s biggest nuclear power station has been reconnected to Ukraine’s national grid after suffering its latest round of damage due to shelling, as the country’s president said Russia’s occupation of the plant had put Europe “one step away from a radiation disaster.”
Ukrainian atomic energy operator Energoatom said the Zaporizhzhia facility in the partly occupied southeastern region of the same name was again providing power to the nation on Friday afternoon, a day after being cut off from the power network from the first time in its history.
Only one of the six reactors at the plant is now functioning, five months after the site was seized by Russian troops who oversee its continued operation by Ukrainian technicians.
Russia and Ukraine blame each other’s forces for repeated shelling of the station that has damaged its power lines and radiation detectors, and while both countries say they want international inspectors to visit the plant to assess its safety, Moscow has rejected calls to “demilitarise” the site by removing its troops, armour and heavy weapons.
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“The world must understand what a threat this is: if the diesel generators hadn’t turned on, if the automation and our staff at the plant had not reacted after the blackout, then we would already be forced to overcome the consequences of a radiation accident,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said of Thursday’s disconnection from the grid.
“Russia has put Ukraine and all Europeans in a situation one step away from a radiation disaster,” he added, after discussing the issue with US president Joe Biden.
Mr Zelenskiy called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other global organisations “to act much faster than they’re acting now. Because every minute the Russian troops stay at the nuclear power plant is a risk of a global radiation disaster.”
He thanked Mr Biden for “supporting the need to return the plant to Ukrainian control and provide for IAEA access immediately. This can be done in a matter of days ... and it’s easier to do now than later, if the wind starts blowing radiation pollution across Europe.”
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White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said after the two leaders’ phone call that “Russia should agree to (a) demilitarised zone around the plant” and allow the IAEA to inspect the site “as soon as possible to check on the safety and security of the system”.
Lana Zerkal, a senior adviser at the energy ministry in Kyiv, told Ukraine’s NV radio that an IAEA inspection visit was being planned for next week, but accused Russia of “artificially creating conditions to prevent the mission reaching the facility”.
It is not clear if Moscow has dropped a previous demand that any IAEA mission travel to Zaporizhzhia via Russia, a condition that Kyiv says the Kremlin would use to legitimise its occupation of parts of eastern and southeastern Ukraine.
Shelling and fighting continued in those regions on Friday, but the frontline has not moved significantly for several weeks, as Ukraine uses western-supplied rocket systems to strike Russian arms and fuel depots and command posts deep inside occupied territory.
