By Max Hunder
KYIV (Reuters) -The idled Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine is not in a condition to be restarted at present, due to a lack of water for cooling and the absence of a stable power supply, the head of the UN’s nuclear safety watchdog said on Tuesday.
Water would have to be pumped from the Dnipro River for the plant, which has not generated power for nearly three years, to restart, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told Reuters.
The facility, located in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region and Europe’s largest nuclear plant, was occupied by Russia in March 2022, shortly after it launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour. Before the war, the plant generated a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity.
Speaking in an interview in Kyiv, Grossi said the Russians had “never hidden the fact” that they want to restart the plant, but added they would not be able to do so soon.
The plant is less than 10 km (6 miles) from Ukrainian positions on the other side of the Dnipro River. It has six reactors, the last of which stopped generating electricity in September 2022.
The water level of its cooling pond, which sits on the southern bank of the Dnipro, dropped significantly in the summer of 2023 after the Kakhovka dam was destroyed downstream.
Nearby areas regularly come under artillery and drone bombardment, which has on occasion damaged the two remaining power lines supplying the electricity needed for the plant to cool itself, even in its dormant state.
Both sides accuse each other of being responsible for the attacks.
Greenpeace issued a report last week saying Russia was building a 90-km high-voltage power line to connect the power plant to its grid.
Grossi said the IAEA did not agree with that report’s conclusions.
“There are some areas where there has been some work, but we do not have any concrete evidence that this is part of a concerted, orchestrated plan to connect the power plant in one sense or the other.”
“We are not in a situation of imminent restart of the plant. Far from that, it would take quite some time before that can be done,” Grossi said.
The plant’s machinery would have to be thoroughly inspected before any restart, he added.
“You can imagine in such a huge piece of machinery, you have pumps, you have bolts, you have pipes, you have a number of things that may be suffering corrosion.”
Grossi said that if enough water could be pumped in from the Dnipro River, all six of the plant’s reactors could eventually be restarted, although “a number of things” would need to be done beforehand.
RUSSIAN TECHNICIANS
Ukraine has said that any attempt by Russian technicians to restart the plant would be dangerous because they are not certified to operate it.
Grossi said Russian nuclear staff were capable of conducting a restart, and that the issue of certification was a political rather than technical one.
“They are professionals — they know what they are doing,” he said.
Ukraine has also protested at the IAEA’s monitoring mission to the plant accessing it via Russian-occupied territory.
Grossi said this was to protect the safety of his staff, and that at present he does not have the necessary guarantees from the Russian side to safely transit IAEA staff through the frontlines to Ukraine-controlled territory, as had been done several times in the past.
(Reporting by Max HunderEditing by William Maclean and Frances Kerry)
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