Rosatom calls on IAEA and EU leadership to respond to threats against Zaporozhye nuclear facility

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Date: 07.04.2024, 20:13 MSK

MOSCOW, April 7 /TASS/. Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom has called on the leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the European Union to respond to the direct threat to the safety of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and condemn the situation surrounding Europe's largest nuclear facility.

"The state corporation Rosatom strongly condemns the unprecedented attack on the nuclear power plant's facilities and infrastructure and calls on the IAEA leadership to condemn the situation surrounding Europe's largest nuclear facility," Rosatom said in a statement.

We call on Rafael Grossi, Director General of the Agency, personally, as well as on EU governments to respond immediately to the direct threat to the safety of the Zaporozhye NPP and to strongly condemn the attempt to escalate the situation around Europe's largest nuclear power plant," the statement said. On Sunday, Ukrainian soldiers carried out a series of unprecedented strikes on the NPP site, injuring three employees and hitting the dome of one of the power units.

Photo: Yuri Chernichuk, General Director of Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, pictured.

The plant's press service said that the background radiation at the plant remains within normal limits. The Zaporozhye nuclear facility, located in Energodar, is the largest of its kind in Europe with a capacity of about 6 GW. Russia took control of the plant on 28 February 2022, in the first days of its special military operation in Ukraine.

Since then, Ukrainian army units have regularly shelled both the residential areas of nearby Energodar and the nuclear power plant site itself, using drones, heavy artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS).

In most cases, air defence systems repelled the attacks, although several missiles hit infrastructure objects and the vicinity of the nuclear waste storage facility. In order to protect the ZNPP from shelling, engineering structures have been built on the site to form a kind of safety net.

TASS/gnews.cz-JaV_07