According to Russian news outlets, the Russian defence ministry has accused Ukraine of firing rounds at the power cables powering the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
According to the defence ministry, IAEA and state-owned nuclear power provider Rosatom specialists will look at the damage at the plant.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, voiced alarm at the escalation of fighting near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
Grossi issued a statement saying, “The news from our team yesterday and this morning is quite distressing.” “Whoever is responsible for this must cease right away. You’re playing with fire, as I’ve mentioned many times before!
He further stated that the agency’s experts were in constant communication with the site management and would keep evaluating and reporting on the circumstance.
Russia has charged Ukraine with shelling the plant, which it quickly occupied on February 24 after the invasion started.
The biggest nuclear power plant in Europe is at Zaporizhzhia. This power outage has raised concerns about its operations as the continuing war’s energy conflict between Moscow and the West has intensified recently.
According to a statement on the agency’s website, just one of the station’s six reactors was still running.
Since Russian soldiers entered Ukraine in late February, the factory has been under Moscow’s control. Each side accuses the other of bombarding the area surrounding.
The dispute over Russian oil and gas exports, meantime, continued this week as the G7 countries established a proposed price ceiling on Russian oil exports and Moscow promised to keep its main gas pipeline to Germany shut down.
The conflict over energy comes as the area gets ready for the upcoming winter months and is a result of President Vladimir Putin’s six-month invasion of Ukraine. It highlights the significant gulf that invasion has created between Moscow and Western nations.
In reference to the ongoing shutdown of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy declared in his evening speech on Saturday that “Russia (is) planning a decisive energy blow on the Europeans for this winter.”
The prior shutdown of the nuclear reactor was attributed by Zelenskiy to Russian bombardment, and he claimed that a radioactive release was narrowly prevented.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE ZAPORIZHZHIA TENSIONS RAISE NUCLEAR CONCERNS
Regarding assaults on the Zaporizhzhia facility, which was taken over by Russian forces in March but is still run by Ukrainian employees and connected to the Ukrainian power system, Kiev and Moscow have swapped allegations.
In anticipation of the release of a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog in the coming days, an IAEA delegation visited the plant on Thursday, and some specialists have stayed there.
Transmission lines were severed last week, cutting Zaporizhzhia off from the national grid for the first time in its history. This led to power outages throughout Ukraine, however backup generators powered essential cooling systems.
This dangerous attack on the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine was condemned on Sunday by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who also demanded an immediate halt to the explosions.
The IAEA’s Rafael Grossi claimed the organization’s staff on the ground reported that some of the plant’s structures, systems, and equipment had been damaged. “The news from our team yesterday and this morning is extremely disturbing,” he added.
This huge nuclear power plant’s site had explosions, which is totally undesirable. Whoever is responsible for this must cease right away. You’re playing with fire, as I’ve mentioned many times before!
Repeated shelling of the plant in southern Ukraine, which Russia seized shortly after its February invasion, has sparked worries about the possibility of a serious accident so close to the location of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster, the worst nuclear accident in history, which is only 500 kilometres (300 miles) away.
Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station supplied around a fifth of the country’s electricity; nevertheless, it has frequently been had to run on backup generators. It has six water-cooled, water-moderated VVER-1000 V-320 reactors with uranium 235 that were built by the Soviet Union.
Although the reactors are off, there remains a chance that the nuclear fuel could overheat if the power to the cooling systems is interrupted. Shelling frequently destroys electricity wires.
SIDESHIP OF BLAME
In the course of the battle, Kyiv and Moscow have both accused the other of targeting the facility and posing a threat of a nuclear accident. On Sunday, they again traded accusations.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed that Ukraine shelled power cables feeding the facility, while TASS, citing a representative of Russian nuclear power operator Rosenergoatom, claimed that part of the site’s storage facilities had been struck by Ukrainian firing.
The CEO of Rosenergoatom’s advisor Renat Karchaa stated, “They fired not only yesterday, but also today, and they are shelling right now,” adding that any artillery attack at the plant constituted a threat to nuclear security.
According to TASS, Karchaa stated that although the shells were fired close to a facility for storing dry nuclear waste and a structure housing recently used nuclear fuel, no radioactive emissions have yet been noticed.
Energoatom, a Ukrainian nuclear energy company, said that the Russian military had shelled the complex and that there were at least 12 hits on the plant infrastructure
It said that Russia had targeted the infrastructure necessary to restart parts of the plant in an attempt to further limit Ukraine’s power supply
Though we know not for sure who the aggressor is, this is an extremely precarious condition as nuclear war is something neither of the nations could stand to survive and will inevitably lead to unmentionable disastrous consequences if not halted immediately
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